Chiffon Scarf (8 page)

The bed was tossed, clothes were everywhere; two large bags stood open and half packed on the floor and the desk looked as if it had been hurriedly and rather frenziedly ransacked, for letters and papers were in utter confusion.

“Sit down,” said Creda. She pushed her hands through her soft curls, wrapped the trailing pink negligee she wore tighter around her and sat down tucking her plump, bare little feet under her. Her eyes were shadowy pools of brown that, just then, looked haunted.

“I’m glad you’ve come,” she said. “I’m trying to pack.”

“I’ll help you. Tell me what to pack.”

“Thanks, Eden. Cigarette?”

As Eden, kneeling at the half-packed bags, shook her head, Creda lighted one herself and smoked it in feverish little puffs.

“What clothes do you want to take?”

“All those things. It’ll be hot as hell at the plantation. I may stay quite a long time. I don’t know what I’ll do. I haven’t made plans. Wait, Eden—look in that pocket, will you? Is there anything in it?”

“Cigarettes,” said Eden, searching the pockets of the jacket she was folding. “A handkerchief. That’s all. Do you want them?” She gave the cigarettes and the wisp of linen to Creda who took them listlessly. “Oh, by the way, Creda, I found a key—”

Instantly Creda shot up out of her chair. Her little face hardened.

“What key?”

“This.” She held out the key. “Does it belong to you?”

Creda gave one quick look at the key. Then she snatched it with greedy fingers, took a long, tremulous breath and sat down again as if her knees refused to hold her upright.

“Yes,” she said, “it’s mine. Thank God—” She caught herself, shot a watchful glance at Eden and said: “That is—I thought I’d lost it.”

“It’s a key to the plant, isn’t it?” said Eden, folding the jacket. .

“Yes. That is—” Creda’s little face was hard and intent.

“How did you know?”

“Noel thought so—”

“Noel!”

“Yes. I didn’t know who lost it. I asked him about it. Shall I pack this bathing suit?”

“Yes. No. That is, Eden—where did you find this key?”

“This morning, at the field. Beside the car. You must have dropped it.”

“Dropped it. Yes. Yes, I suppose I did. Did you tell Noel where you found the key?”

Eden considered.

“No. I just told him I thought you’d lost it. He said it was probably Bill’s key. That’s all.”

“Oh. Oh, I see. Yes, that’s right. It was Bill’s key.”

It was difficult for her to say “Bill”; she brought it out with a kind of thrust. Yet whatever emotion it was that she repressed, it was unlike grief. She went on quickly:

“I happened to have it. He—gave it to me.”

It was unconvincing.

Eden folded a dress and said nothing. After a curiously uneasy moment Creda said:

“Listen, Eden; don’t tell anyone I had this key. Will you?”

“Why on earth should I tell anybody! It doesn’t matter.”

“I know, but—promise me. Will you, Eden?”

“I’ll promise anything you want me to; don’t be silly, Creda. Nobody cares about a key. Oh, by the way”—she folded an organdy dinner dress, much ruffled, in tissue paper—”by the way,” she said casually above the soft little rattle of tissue paper, “what do you know about Major Pace? Just who is he?”

There was another little silence and it was again uneasy. She glanced at Creda over the masses of organdy and tissue paper, and Creda said at last, rather stiffly:

“I don’t know anything about him. What a queer question!”

Eden accepted it and put the dress carefully in the bag and reached for the next one.

“I wonder what country he really does represent?”

This time Creda replied quickly.

“I’m sure I don’t know.”

“Perhaps he doesn’t really represent any country,” ventured Eden. “Perhaps he’s just an ordinary, commercial—well, adventurer.”

“Adventurer? What do you mean?”

“Well,” said Eden, “I suppose there are spies; other airplane manufacturing plants have trouble now and then with spies. I don’t know why the Blaine plant should be immune.”

“Spies!” said Creda on a quick breath. “Really “ She laughed sharply and nervously. “He’s not a spy. He offered to buy the engine. Besides, there’s never been any trouble about spies at the Blaine plant.”

“I suppose you’re right.” Eden closed the bag and sat back on her heels to look full at Creda and risked another question which she tried to make sound idle and casual. “Did you ever see Major Pace anywhere before?”

Creda blinked slowly; Eden was sure that she held her breath for an instant or two because the thin line of smoke coming from her pretty little nostrils stopped for a second or two and then went on. And then Creda opened her brown eyes wide and looked straight back at Eden.

“Never,” she said flatly.

Yet there was no proof, thought Eden, returning to her room an hour or so later, that it was a lie.

She’d finished Creda’s packing; when she left, Creda closed the door promptly again behind her. And as promptly relocked it. It was queer to stand there in that broad, well-lighted hall and hear the swift smooth click of the bolt.

She wondered why Creda was afraid. And more specifically, what there was to be afraid of.

It was already late in the afternoon when she finished Creda’s packing. The sun went down, still clear; at eight o’clock, after a quick dinner, they departed (bags following in another car) for the big commercial airport where the chartered plane waited for them.

They did not, however, leave at nine o’clock, for Jim was late. He did not arrive, indeed, until nearer ten and their embarking at the last was hurried. Dorothy Woolen had arrived early by taxi and was already waiting for them in the cabin. A boy steward stored their baggage. Eden had no chance for a word with Jim who went forward almost at once to the pilot’s compartment. Perhaps he intended to take the controls during a part of the flight.

And all at once they were settled, choosing, as if instinctively, separate seats. The motors grew louder, roared and there was motion around them. They taxied across the lighted field and began to lift, a little sluggishly, as if the plane carried a heavy load.

Then almost suddenly lights dropped away below them. The motors settled into a deep drone. Pace, just behind Eden, pulled out a traveling rug and hunched it around his shoulders. Dorothy Woolen, across the aisle, turned her face away and appeared to go to sleep as instantly and efficiently as she did everything else.

Averill was in the seat just ahead of Eden; she rose to adjust her yellow cloak around her, gave Eden a long, wordless look, her small, slender face sallow and enigmatic in the half-light, turned and sat down again.

Outside the night was black and dotted with stars.

Inside there was nothing but the sound of the motors, confusing, drugging thought, eventually lulling one to sleep in spite of the things there were to think. The last thing Eden remembered was taking her gray chiffon scarf from her pocket and wrapping it lightly about her throat.

The plane droned on through the limitless night sky.

Far below and behind them now was the sleeping city, majestic and powerfully entrenched above the broad, winding river which was powerful, too, and older.

Somewhere below and behind them was the wreck of what had been that morning a shining silver-colored thing of skill and loveliness. Around it still men with great lights worked; Jim had spent most of the day there, working with them. Until he found what he had found.

The trouble was he didn’t know exactly what to do with it. Or rather, he knew what was to be done but not how. It made him horribly uneasy. Suppose things slipped up. Suppose the thing he counted on failed him.

He was uneasy, too, somehow about the plane and the people inside it. What was going on in there? What were they thinking? And what would they say when they knew?

The night went on; he watched the instrument panel. Once, carefully, he disconnected the radio; the pilot saw it and grinned, a brief lifting of his lip which was more like a snarl than a smile.

Jim saw the smile; that, too, quite suddenly gave him a queer pang of uneasiness. Had he unleashed something it might be difficult to check?

Nonsense! That was nerves. Presently he rechecked figures and gestured to the pilot who smiled briefly again. The plane swung a little further west. Due west now and traveling well over a hundred miles an hour. After a while Jim motioned again to the pilot and took the controls himself while the pilot hunched himself inside his leather coat and slept like a strong, young animal—wary and feral even in his sleep.

When Eden awoke it was dawn; gray light struggled dimly into the cabin and the sky outside was a great, gray bowl streaked with lemon yellow.

She sat up straighter; her muscles were tired and cramped. She put her hand automatically to her hair and yawned.

No one else seemed to be stirring.

It was cold in the plane and the air was like wine, stinging and clear.

Eden glanced out the window again and, this time, downward. And instantly sat up to stare incredulously.

For they were flying over the sea. No, it couldn’t be the sea. It was gray, dun-colored, formless—stretching out to meet the lighter gray of the sky. It wasn’t a sea; it was land. But it was like a desert, flat, rolling, with distant, horizons. It was like a great plate spread out below.

There ought to be the shapes of trees. There ought to be towns and lights and blotches of shadow that marked vegetation. New Orleans ought to be somewhere near, or the bayou stretching silver fingers inland.

She caught her breath abruptly. The sun had tipped over the horizon, and it was behind them. And there were jagged peaks lifting up into the sky ahead of them.

Peaks which, when the sun touched them, leaped into crimson—a soft crimson, red as blood against the pale sky.

Mountains?

They looked like something out of a phantasmagory. Out of magic. Out of fairy tales. An enchanted range, shimmering crimson against the sky.

The shining crimson peaks were unutterably beautiful. They were at the same time a little terrifying.

The main thing was, however, that they ought not to have been there.

W
HERE WERE THEY, THEN
; above all, what had happened while they slept?

She turned again, anxiously, wondering why no one else stirred and shared her alarm.

But no one moved: no one was awake. Pace was still hunched in his rug behind her; Dorothy an inert mass across the aisle. Averill, Creda in the seat beyond Averill; Noel opposite Creda with his adventurer’s profile sunk in the collar of his coat—none of them moved. Even the boyish steward slept, with his curly blond head tipped back and his mouth open.

Jim must be in front with the pilot.

She looked out the window again and the mountains were still there, except the plane must have changed direction a little for their position had moved and they were much nearer.

The plane must be going very fast. She tried to estimate roughly the speed of the engine and could not; to her untutored ears there was merely a smooth steady drone.

There was still desert below and they must be very high; but once when the light struck just right, she caught a glimmer of reflected light as from water in a crisscross, checkerboard pattern. Irrigation ditches—it must be.

What could have happened during the night? They must be miles off their course.

Again she turned to seek some explanation and again no one stirred.

She must arouse them, find Jim.

She was cold; absently she pulled her heavy coat closer around her; she’d lost the chiffon scarf—she groped for it and forgot it.

For the mountains vanished. They had turned, then, southward. Or were they simply flying in a great circle?

She glued her face to the window; they must be flying at considerable speed, for when next she saw the mountains they had changed—they were no longer chimerical, beautiful, magical. They were now rocky peaks dotted halfway up with green scrub pine, all brown and green except those bare , rocky peaks which still had a kind of crimson glow. They were clearly discernible now as mountains, mountains of the earth and of the three dimensions. But Eden was never to forget her first, poignant impression of unearthliness, of beauty and, oddly, of terror.

They rose again, high into the clear sky; the air was dry and there was not too much of it; she had an impulse to gulp for breath; her nose felt dry and her throat stung. They were crossing some of those peaks now.

She must rouse the others; she must go forward and find Jim.

Undoubtedly the pilot knew where they were going. There was certainty in the speed with which they drove ahead. Jim, who must be with the pilot—who perhaps was piloting the plane—must know, then, too. And that circle, she thought suddenly, had meant that the pilot was looking for an opening, a pass, and had found it.

The peaks were like a wall, like a barrier. She had a fantastic notion that when they crossed that crimson, jagged wall they crossed from a known world where there were rules into a world that was strange and where anything might happen.

Moments must have passed; she felt suspended, as if in a spell, as if she dared not move while they crossed that barrier. She liked flying and was accustomed to it. But the immensity of the spectacle below held her spellbound, awed, a little frightened.

And all at once they were again over a flat country; the plane lost altitude: they were descending—rapidly, too, for the brownish green expanse far below began to take on shape and distinctness.

She realized that again they were circling. Again it was as if the pilot were looking for something on the earth below. A landing field? Or just a mark to guide him?

She must find Jim, she told herself again. She reached to unfasten the safety belt the little steward had adjusted around each the night before.

And just then Jim himself came suddenly, stooping, through the little door, and shouted: “Hey, there, everybody. We’re landing—”

She felt for the safety belt; it was securely fastened. And the others, as habitual plane travelers do at a landing, woke instantly.