They all glanced out of the window again. The grey murk still hung over the terrace, shutting out the view of the Botticelli garden where, on this early May morning, the polyanthus and forget-me-nots and daffodils, shedding their green cocoons, were bursting into colourful life.
‘Let’s go,’ said Rex, impatiently. ‘De Richleau’s right. You’d best get some clothes on, then we’ll beat it for Paris the second you’re fit.’
The rest followed him out into the hall and upstairs to the rooms above. The house was silent and seemingly deserted. The servants were obviously taking Richard’s orders in the most literal sense and, released for once from their daily tasks, enjoying an unexpected holiday in their own quarters.
Marie Lou looked into the nursery and almost broke down again for a moment as she once more saw the empty cot, but she hurried past it to the nurse’s bedroom and found the woman still sleeping soundly.
In Richard’s dressing-room the men made hasty preparations. Rex was clad in the easy lounge suit which he had put on in De Richleau’s flat, but Richard and the Duke were still in pyjamas. When they were dressed Richard fitted the others out as well as he could with top clothes for their journey. The Duke was easy, being only a little taller than himself, and a big double overcoat was found for Rex, into which he managed to scramble despite the breadth of his enormous shoulders. Marie Lou joined them a few moments later, clad in her breeches and leather flying coat, which she always used whenever she went up with Richard..
Downstairs again, they paused in the library to make another hurried meal. Then the door was locked, and after casting a last unhappy glance at Tanith’s body, which remained unaltered in appearance, Rex led the way out on the terrace.
They walked quickly down the gravel path beside the Botticelli border, the sound of their footsteps muffled by the all pervading mistthrough Marie Lou’s own garden, with its long herbaceous borders, and past the old sundialround the quadrangles of tessellated pavement which fell in a succession of little terraces to the pond garden, with its water lilies, and so to the meadow beyond.
When they reached the hangar Richard and Rex ran out the plane and got it in order for the flight. De Richleau stood watching their operations with Marie Lou beside him, both of them fretting a little at the necessary delay, since now that the vital decision had been taken every member of the party was impatient to set out.
They settled themselves in the comfortable four-seater. Rex swung the propeller, well accustomed to the ways of aeroplanes, and the engine purred upon a low steady note. He watched it for a second, and then, as he scrambled aboard, there came the long conventional cry : ‘All set.’
The plane moved slowly forward into the dank mist. The hedges and trees on either side were shut out by banks of fog, but Richard knew the ground so well that he felt confident of judging his distance and direction. He taxied over the even grass of the long field, and turned to rise. The plane lifted, touched ground again gently twice, and they were off.
As they left the earth a new feeling came over Richard. He was passionately fond of flying, and it always filled him with exhilaration, but this was different. It was as though he had suddenly come out into the daylight after having been walking down a long, dark, smoky tunnel for many hours. At long intervals there had been brightly lit recesses in the sides of it where figures stood like tableaux at a wax-works show. The slug-like Thing and Fleur; Rex standing at the window with Tanith in his arms; Simon whispering something to the Duke; Marie Lou’s face as she stood with her hand resting on the rail of Fleur’s empty cot, and a dozen others. The rest of that strange journey he seemed to have made, consisted of long periods of blankness only punctuated by little cries of fear and scraps of reiterated argument, the purpose of which he could no longer remember. Nowhis brain was clear again, and he settled himself with new purpose to handle the plane with all his skill.
In those few moments they had risen clear of the ground mist and were soaring upwards into the blue above. As De Richleau looked down he saw a very curious thing. Not only was the fog that had hemmed them in local, but it seemed to be concentrated entirely upon Cardinals Folly. He could just make out the chimneys of the house rising in its centre, as from a grey sea, and from the buildings it spread out in a circular formation for half a mile or so on every side, hiding the gardens from his view and obscuring the meadows between the house and the village, but beyond, all was clear in the brilliant sunshine of the early summer afternoon.
Rex was beside Richard in the cockpit. Automatically he had taken on the job of navigator, and, like Richard, his brain numbed before with misery, had started to function properly again directly he set to busying himself with the maps and scales.
The Duke, sitting in the body of the machine with Marie Lou, felt that there was nothing he could say to comfort her, but he took her hand in his and held it between his own. From his quick gesture she felt again his intense distress that he should ever have been the means of bringing her this terrible unhappiness, so, to distract his thoughts, she put her mouth right up against his ear and told him of the odd dream she had had; about reading the old book. He gave her a curious glance and began to shout back at her.
She could not catch all he said owing to the noise of the engine, but enough to tell that he was intensely interested. He seemed to think that she had been dreaming of the famous Red Book of Appin, a wonderful treatise on Magic owned by the Stewards of Invernahyle, who were now extinct. The book had been lost and not heard of for more than a hundred years, but her description of it, and the legend that it might only be read with understanding by those who wore a circlet of iron above their brow made him insistent that it must be this which she had seen in her dream. He pressed her to try and remember if she had understood any portion of it.
After some trouble she managed to convey to him that she had read one sentence on a faded vellum page, and that although the lettering was quite different from anything which she had ever seen before, she understood it at the time, but could not recall the meaning now. Then as talking was so difficult, they fell silent.
At a hundred miles an hour the plane soared above the English counties, but they took little heed of the fields and hedges, woods and hills, which fled so swiftly beneath them. Somehow they seemed to have stepped out of their old life altogether. Time no longer existed for them, only the will to arrive at their destination in order to be active once again. All their thoughts were concentrated now upon Paris and the man who had lost half his ear. Would he be there? Could they find him if he was? And would they arrive before Mocata?
They passed over the Northern end of the English Channel almost without noticing it; Marie Lou felt a little shock when the plane banked steeply and Richard brought it circling down.
The sun was sinking behind great banks of cloud and, as the plane tilted, she saw that a thick mist lay below them in which glowed dull patches of half-obscured light. Richard and Rex knew them, however, to be the fog flares of the Le Bourget landing ground.
A few seconds more and they had seen the last of the sunset. A thin greyness closed about them. One of the flares showed bright, and the plane bounded along the earth until Richard brought it to a standstill.
Almost in a daze they answered the. questions of the officers at the airport and passed the Customs, secured a fast-looking taxi and, packed inside it, were heading for the centre of Paris.
As they ran through the streets, with the familiar high-pitched note of the taxi’s horn continually sounding and the subtle smell of the epiceries in their nostrilsthe very scent of Paristhey noticed half-unconsciously that night had fallen once more.