Mr Lofte's appearance had improved out of all recognition in the three days since I had seen him. His face was shaved, his suit so new it still bore traces of tailor's chalk, and the only odour about him was the faint aura of shaving soap.
Mycroft greeted him by saying, “My brother's wife needs to be in Orkney immediately. I wish you to assist her.”
The unflappable modern-day Phileas Fogg merely asked, “Will you need both the 'plane and the pilot?”
“I can requisition the machine, if need be.”
“When you say ‘immediately,’ do you wish to undertake a night landing?” I hastened to assure him that my need for speed was merely desperate, not suicidal. He nodded.
“In that case, let me see what I can scare up at the Society.”
“I'll come with you, if I may,” I said, thinking: my life, my choice of pilots. Then Mycroft gently cleared his throat. I looked over. He was simply reading the paper, but after a moment, I saw the source of his objection.
“Actually,” I told Lofte, “I have a few things I must do. How about if I meet you down the road a piece? In, say, twenty minutes?”
“I don't mind wait-”
“No no, it's a lovely day out there.” I plucked his shiny new Panama hat from the side-table and thrust it back into his hands. “Where are we headed?”
“ Albemarle Street,” he answered.
“The Burlington Arcade, then. Twenty minutes. See you there.”
Obedient, if uncomprehending, he stepped out of Mycroft's front door. Three minutes later, I stepped through Mycroft's private back exit.
What happened next is no-one's fault but my own. Leaving the dim tunnel near Angel Court with my mind on aeroplanes, I came face to face with a man I had last seen in the corridors of Scotland Yard. Worse, his reactions were quick.
Leaving behind the light cardigan I wore seemed preferable to assaulting one of Lestrade's men, but it was training, not speed, that wrenched my arm free from his hard fingers. Speed did make it possible to draw away from him on the street, as I led him on a circuit of St James's Palace and up to the mid-afternoon crowds along Piccadilly.
He was persistent, give him that. I didn't shake him off until I dodged in and out of the Dorchester, and even then, I took care to work my way back through the by-ways of Mayfair. All in all, it was a full half hour before I spotted Lofte, browsing a display of silk kerchiefs in the Burlington Arcade.
“Good,” I said nonchalantly, my eyes everywhere but on him. “Shall we go?”
He took in my breathless condition and proved his worth by whipping the hat from his head and popping it on mine, then did the same with his jacket, which fit my arms rather less completely than it had his. He smoothed his hair with both hands and followed me back up the Arcade, removing his neck-tie and rolling up his sleeves to make for a more complete change of image. From a distance, the two men who left the Arcade, one of them regrettably en dishabille, bore little resemblance to the young woman who had sprinted away from an officer of the law.
Lofte's “Society” was, it transpired, the Aeronautical Society of Great Britain. And Mr Lofte himself, I found as we strolled up Old Bond Street with watchful eyes, had been Captain Lofte of the RAF, beginning in the early days of the War when, if memory served me, the average life span of an active fighter pilot had been three weeks. Even after several years in the Far East, he still knew half the world's airmen, and those he didn't, had at least heard of him. It explained how he had been able to thumb rides across two continents at the drop of a hat.
The Aeronautical Society wore the face of science over the heart of madcap undergraduates. We walked past a dignified sign and through a polished front door into a minor riot that would not have been tolerated at that bastion of Bohemian excess, the Café Royal. Five boisterous young men were racing-literally-down a long staircase while a sixth flung his legs over the banister and leapt to the floor below, staggering into a scramble as he hit the carpet ahead of the pack that rounded the newel and circled towards whatever rooms lay behind. Voices raised from the depths of the building indicated disputed results and an accusation of cheating; the dignified Swiss man at my side looked only marginally discomfited.
“We shall wait for them in here,” he suggested, leading me to a sitting room too tidy to be used for anything but the occasional entertainment of guests and ladies. He pressed into my hand an unasked-for glass of sherry, and slipped out. I set the glass on the table, and looked around me.
The quiet room was decorated primarily with photographs: Blériot after crossing the Channel in 1909; the Wrights' first flyer, wings drooping alarmingly but its wheels clear of the ground; an aerial dogfight over English fields; Alcock and Brown standing next to the biplane they crossed the Atlantic in. I lingered over this last-surely immeasurably harder than a jaunt to Scotland, and that was five whole years ago. I puzzled over the next photograph, of a curious looking aeroplane with an enormous set of propellers misplaced to its roof. It resembled some unlikely insect.
“That's an autogiro,” said an American voice from behind me.
I had not known there was anyone else in the room, but the man had been sitting in a high-backed chair in a dim corner. I smiled vaguely in his direction, and returned to the photo. “It looks like the result of two aeroplanes flying into each other,” I commented. Then, realising that a jest about mid-air collisions might not be in the best of taste here, I amended it to, “-or a piece of very Modernist sculpture. Does it actually function?”
“They go up,” he said laconically. “Something I could help you with?”
“No, I'm here with Mr-Captain-Lofte. I think he's gone to find someone.”
“Probably me.” The man peeled himself out of the chair and started in my direction. Watching the unevenness of his progress, I thought at first that he had been injured, then decided he was intoxicated. When he stood before me, I saw it was both.
He'd been burned. Shiny scar tissue spread up his neck to his jaw-line, the skin on his left hand was taut enough to affect mobility, and the stiffness of his gait suggested further damage. He held his drink in his right hand, and watched my reaction to his appearance.
It must be hard, to have to wait for every new acquaintance to absorb the implications of scars. Particularly when the new acquaintance was a not entirely unattractive young woman.
“I'm Mary Russell,” I said, and hesitated about whether or not to put out my hand.
He decided for me, moving his glass over to his left hand, concentrating for a moment until the fingers grasped it, then putting his right hand out for me to shake. “Pleased to meet you. The name's Cash Javitz.”
I narrowed my eyes. “ Detroit?”
He transferred the glass back to the more secure grasp. “'Bout fifty miles away. How'd you guess?”
“Accents are one of my husband's… hobbies, you might say. I pick things up from him.”
“I been here so long, some Yanks think I'm a Brit.”
“Me, too. Mother was English, I'm from California, my father from Boston.”
“So, what's Lofty want?”
“I need to get to Scotland in a hurry. Mr Lofte seemed to think this was the place to start looking.”
He lifted the glass to his face and drank, watching me over it. “Where in Scotland?”
“Well, actually, the Orkneys. Those are the islands-”
“I know where Orkney is. Don't I, you snake?”
I was taken aback until Lofte's voice answered; I hadn't heard him come in.
“Don't be rude to the lady, Cash. A simple no will suffice.”
“How much?” Javitz said instead.
“Do you have a 'plane?”
“Wait a minute,” I interrupted. “Not to offend, Mr Javitz, but my husband suggested I find a pilot who had taken the pledge. Considering the distance, I'd say that was a good idea.”