Stephen Morris Read Online Free PDF

wanting that next year joy-riding would be far less popular; there were not enough special orders to justify the inauguration of a special air-taxi service. The business seemed to be coming near its end; Riley and Stenning ceased to buy new material, and devoted all their energies to saving money.
    It was one Sunday morning that Stenning came back from the telephone with the information that the lord of the Towers, near Cowes, had instructed his butler to telephone to them to inform them that he would visit them during the afternoon with a car-load of his house party.
    ‘That’s the stuff,’ said Riley meditatively. ‘I wonder if they know our usual charges?’
    Stenning snorted democratically. ‘They’ll ruddy well have to take their turn in the queue, if there’s a crowd,’ he said. It was evident that he was hoping for a crowd.
    ‘Better put up a flag in honour of the event,’ said Morris.
    ‘I don’t see any point in that,’ said Stenning. ‘Besides, we haven’t got one.’
    ‘Better not risk it,’ said Riley regretfully, still meditating the finance of the visit. ‘It gives one a bad name, that sort of thing.’
    ‘Well,’ said Morris cheerfully. ‘I hope you enjoy yourselves.’ His machine was laid up for an overhaul.
    Riley turned to him sourly. ‘You’ll look pretty blue if they tip us half a crown apiece, won’t you?’
    Morris laughed, and strolled off to work on his machine.
    In due time the Rolls-Royce arrived, and from a distance Morris watched the preparations round the machines. He chose a grassy spot near the fence and sat down to watch. Presently two passengers embarked in one machine; the engine burst into life, and Riley moved out over the aerodrome. He faced up into the wind, began to move, swept over the ground faster and faster, and went away in a climbing turn with full load.
    There was a kind of grunt from behind Morris; a critical approving grunt. He turned to see who had grunted.
    The only person within range was an immense man leaning over the fence, watching Stenning preparing to get off. He was a man considerably over six feet in height, massively built, with a great red face that seemed vaguely familiar and a great untidy shock of red hair, bursting out from under a tweed cap a size or two too small for him. He was well turned out in faded plusfours; he looked a typical country squire or gentleman farmer. Stenning got away in a less spectacular manner and the stranger grunted again, less approvingly. Then he noticed Morris watching him from the inside of the fence, and spoke to him.
    ‘Clerget?’ he asked. His voice, so soft as hardly to be audible, contrasted oddly with his appearance.
    ‘Hundred and ten Le Rhones,’ said Morris, naming the engine.
    ‘So?’ said the big man softly. ‘They get off very well with the load - particularly the first one.’
    Morris moved a little closer to the fence.
    ‘That’s so,’ he said. ‘They’re good machines - and we spend a good deal of time looking after them, of course.’He liked the look of this chap. ‘But, of course, the difference in the get off there’ - he indicated the aerodrome - ‘was more a matter of pilots. That first one was Malcolm Riley, rather a famous man in his way, though one doesn’t see much of him in the papers.’
    ‘Oh yes … I remember him. Test pilot for Pilling-Henries in 1918, wasn’t he?’
    ‘You know him?’ asked Morris in surprise.
    ‘Not personally. I have met him.’
    Morris wondered who this was, who was evidently no stranger to the business.
    ‘You were in the Air Force in the war?’ he said.
    ‘Er, no,’ said the man, a little nervously. ‘I didn’t go to the war. My name is Rawdon.’
    Morris knew now where he had seen that face and figure before. It had been in an illustration to one of those foolish articles that technical papers occasionally effect - ‘Idols of the Industry’, or something of the sort.
    ‘Would you care to come inside?’ he said deferentially.