Mysterious Aviator by Nevil Shute Page A

uneasily in my chair.
    Arner reached out slowly for a cigar, and lit it. Dermott turned to me. “I understand that you were a pilot in the war, Mr. Moran,” he said.
    “Of a sort,” I replied. “I was never anything to write home about.”
    He smiled. “Still, with that experience you’ll probably be able to give me a lot of help. First of all, I think I’d better give you the outlines of this—this espionage. You’ll see better then what we want to know.”
    He paused. “There’s something going on at Portsmouth,” he said at last, and seemed to consider for a minute. “A certain operation. At the Ministry—the Air Ministry—we do not consider this operation to be our concern at all. We regard it as purely an Admiralty matter. You’ll appreciate the position. There’s very little to be gained by discussing this—operation.”
    I nodded. “I can take that for granted.”
    “Right. Now, a part of the work necessary in the carrying out of this scheme is maritime, and is so placed as to be in full view of the shore. Generally speaking, all operations that concern harbour defences and matters of that sort are regarded as secret, but usually that secrecy is only relative. You see what I mean. If a fort is to be built, the Admiralty can go on saying it’s secret till they’re blue in the face—but there it is, and any passer-by can see the muzzles of the guns sticking out.”
    He blew a long cloud of smoke. “In this instance—which is in no way connected with the defences of the port—secrecy really is most urgent. It’s vital. For that reason, since a part of the operation can be seen from the shore, it was arranged to carry out the necessary maritime work at night.”
    He paused, and eyed me steadily. “Twice in the last week this work has been overlooked, and possibly photographed. Each time an aeroplane, the nature of which we don’t yet know, has flown over and dropped a large magnesium flare.”
    I nodded slowly, without taking my eyes from his face.
    “The first time it happened was on Monday night. The flare appeared suddenly at a height of about two thousand feet, and burnt for perhaps a minute. It came as a complete surprise. There was a tendency at first to put it down to a natural phenomenon—a meteor of some sort. That’s all nonsense, of course.”
    I wrinkled my brows. “If it was an aeroplane, surely you’d have heard it,” I remarked. “They make the devil of a noise.”
    “Unless they are silenced. There’s been a lot of progress made in that direction—in this country.”
    “I hadn’t heard of that,” I said. “I’ve been away from flying for so long.”
    He knocked the ash from the end of his cigar on to a plate. “The same thing happened last Thursday night,” he said. “This time the machine was seen. It got too close to the light, and was seen clearly for a few seconds in the light of its own flare. We were fully alive to the situation then, and certain anti-aircraft measures had been put in hand. Well, they didn’t come off. The machine got away without being identified.”
    I blew a long cloud of smoke. “I imagine you’ll make it pretty hot for him if he comes again,” I remarked.
    “If he comes again,” repeated Dermott. “He may not. We’re by no means sure that he got away on Thursday. In fact, we think he landed. Here.”
    I paused for a moment before replying. “I see,” I said at last. “What makes you think that?”
    “Two bits of evidence. The lighthouse-keepers at the Nab Tower report that they heard the engine of an aeroplane come on suddenly, not so very far away. They’ve got an acoustic apparatus there that tells them roughly the direction of any sound. It’s a simple thing; they use it for ships in fog. They turned it on to this aeroplane.”
    He smiled. “Now, their evidence is rather interesting. They say that the sound was steady for half a minute or so—just the normal noise of an aeroplane. It seemed to be coming straight