“The porter doesn’t remember you.”
“No. He was talking with someone. My bag was light, and I just climbed up the car steps. I was tired, and I undressed at once. I—”
“Save it,” he said as the figure of the pilot loomed up in front of the plane.
“All ready?” Kleinsmidt asked.
“All right. Hop aboard.”
We climbed into the low-ceilinged cabin of a single-motored plane. The pilot looked at me curiously, said, “You ever flown before?”
“Yes.”
“Understand about your safety belt and all that?”
“Yes.”
The pilot jerked down a curtain behind him, gunned the motor into a roar, and we started moving. After a few minutes, the wheels gave a series of short, sharp jolts, and then we zoomed upward and out across the line of colored lights. Ahead, the circling finger of an airway beacon cut through the darkness. Kleinsmidt tapped me on the knee, held his finger to his lips for silence, slid my bag over so that his leg was holding it tightly against the side of the cabin, out of my reach. He closed his eyes and almost immediately began to breathe heavily.