Chapter 37

“So, what did you do THIS time?” asked Shang Li-Sung of Rabaissu Baktela.  He had heard of the big cat’s expulsion from Katie’s cottage, but not the reason.

“The mistress gets complacent here...” said the big Abyssinian lion, stretching his shoulders and yawning, “So I gave her a starting, to keep her alert.”

They were lounging on the verandah, sipping Nootnops Red and awaiting the arrival of Major Jack Finlayson -- someone to whom their employer wished speak in complete privacy, she had made quite clear to them both.

“Mmmm,” said Shang, who had known the huge feline long enough by now not to take his pronouncements at face value. “Now what did you REALLY do?”

Rabaissu picked up a pebble and tossed it into the water.

“I...suggested that the mistress would be vulnerable in the bath and that I should watch over her.”

The red panda winced as if stung.

“One of this days, Rabaissu,” he said, also picking up a pebble and throwing it, “Her Grace is going to order me to teach you a lesson for always talking to her like that...and I’m not sure I’m looking forward to it.”

At this, Raibassu took no offense, only growled a little.  Shang’s remark had not been made boastfully, but delivered as a statement of plain fact.  In a stand-up fight, they were more than a match for one other and both of them knew it all too well.


It hadn’t started out well for Shang and Rabaissu when the black-maned lion had first become Katie MacArran’s bodyguard.  As the pinto mare’s head of security, Shang Li-Sung had assumed, not unreasonably, that Raibassu would be working at his direction -- but the big cat insisted that he was answerable to no one but ‘the mistress’.  The rift between them had continued to widen until, late one night in the drawing room of Blue Gates Manor in Kensington, their exchange had finally proceeded well beyond heated words.

And that was when both of them discovered just how badly they had underestimated one another.  Raibassu had assumed that a bandy-legged little herbivore like Shang would have little if any strength to match his own.  For his part, the red panda had taken it for granted that a hulking monster like Raibassu would be able to move perhaps half as quickly as himself.

Instead, much to Shang’s surprise, his first three blows had landed on empty air, but the fourth had spun the big lion around like a top...much to HIS amazement.

They had been going at it for perhaps twenty minutes when Katie had entered what was left of the drawing room.  Both Shang and Rabaissu had immediately shot to attention, expecting to be given their respective notices.

Instead, the pinto mare had barely glanced in their direction, strolling past them and into the scullery without so much as a single word.   When she emerged a moment later, munching an apple, all she’d said was, “Be sure and clean up after you’re done...and don’t take it into the front parlour.  I LIKE the furniture in there.”

Then she’d disappeared up the stairs and gone back to bed.

And Shang and Raibassu had begun to pick up the debris.  By the time they were finished, they had established an understanding, if not a friendship.  That didn’t happen until later, in China,  when Shang Li-Sung’s home city of Shanghai fell to the invading Japanese.  When the red panda had been given the news, he’d acted in a manner that was most untypical of him; he had gone out and gotten stone drunk.

It had been Raibassu who found him and brought him home.

“I know what you are feeling, Shang Li-Sung,” the big cat had said, as he’d carried the half comatose red panda from the Nanking gin-mill where he’d been quietly poisoning himself, (after throwing the bouncer through a wall, when he’d tried to extort a c-note before allowing them to depart.) “My heart also broke, the day the Fascists marched into Addis Ababa.”

From that day forward, the two of them had been kindred spirits.


Now Raibassu was saying, “The Mistress knows I do not mean those things, Shang...and she has long since figured out why I talk to her that way.”

The red panda was about to respond, when a new voice hailed them from the front gate. 

“‘Scuse me, mates...Her Grace available?”

They looked, and were surprised to see Drake Hackett coming up the walkway.

“She should be just finishing up her bath, Drake” said Shang, rising from his seat, “but why are you here now?  You know Her Grace has a private lunch meeting on shortly with Major Jack Finlayson.”

“A VERY private meeting.” added Raibassu, just to make sure the canine got the message.

“Yeah, I know.” said Drake, corking a thumb over one shoulder, “but it’ll be a bit before the Major shows up.  I spotted ‘im checkin’ in at the Tapotobo while I was on me way here, so I figure it’s maybe another arf hour or so before he shows...an’ anyway, I heard something from Keith that Her Grace’ll like to hear about right quick.”

“In that case, check with Hsing and see if she’s done.” said Shang, motioning towards the front door.

Katie had just finished cinching up the belt on her robe, when her maid came knocking on the bedroom door.

“Drake Hackett want talk for minute, Grace.” said the Chinese pony, bowing.

“Drake?” said Katie, every bit as surprised as Shang and Rabaissu had been, “What’s the heck’s he doing here?”

“Got some info that you’ll want right away.” came the Queensland Heeler’s voice from out in the hall.

They talked while Katie sat at her dressing table, brushing out her mane and tail.

“It’s about that skunk-femme who left ‘er plane in yer hangar,” said Drake, wasting no time. “Athena Moorefield.  According to what me old mate Keith says, she’s not the spoiled little Sheila yer might think she is.  Poor kid’s just had a very bad hurt, an’ her head’s still not quite right with it.”

Katie grimaced as the comb caught on a tangle.

“Well that’s interesting news, Drake...she won’t be as much trouble as I thought.  But is that really important enough to bother me with right now?”

The canine cleared his throat.

“Yes...well y’see, there’s more to it than that, Y’ Grace.  Seems Miss Moorefield’s problem stems from a little run-in she’s had with an old friend of yours...Josslyn Hay, the Earl of Errol.”

The comb in Katie’s hoof abruptly stopped moving.  She set it down in her lap, then turned to look directly at Drake.

“Go on.” she told him.

Sure enough, it was the age old story; the dashing English noble sweeping an innocent young American off her feet...then afterwards showing himself for the cad he really was.  In Josslyn Hay’s case, he hadn’t even left a note when he’d disappeared...which didn’t surprise Katie, none of it did.  Now that she thought about it, Athena Moorefield was every inch the type of femme the Earl of Errol adored...literally   Like the pinto mare’s late, unlamented brother Colin, Josslyn Hay also had something of a penchant for virgins, though unlike Colin, his tastes didn’t run exclusively in that direction.  But that was not what had initially attracted the foxhound to Miss Moorefield; Katie was more than certain of it.  Josslyn Hay also had a particular weakness for large-breasted femmes...and golden-furred skunkette had certainly been qualified in that department.

All of this was interesting, but still nothing worth telling her about immediately.  Katie MacArran had lost her own virginity under very similar circumstances, the only difference being that she had both known and accepted that it would be only a brief affair.

But then Drake Hackett added a new wrinkle to the tale:

“Before he skipped out, it seems His Earlship ‘borrowed’ $3000 dollars American from Miss Moorefield -- which was just about every penny she had.  There’s also a rumour going round that he slipped her a Mickey before...”

His words were abruptly truncated, as the comb in Katie’s lap snapped in two with a sound like a pistol shot.

“Why that filthy, slimy...” the pinto mare neighed, her ears laying back and her teeth baring, “That’s a new low, even for him.”

There was a moment of tense, uneasy silence before Drake responded with a crooked smile, “Well, leastways y’got the satisfaction of knowin’ that ‘Is Grace, the Earl of Errol  is in a bit of a financial twist.” Katie just snorted and tossed the halves of the comb at nothing in particular.

“Don’t bet on it, Drake.  His Graceless didn’t pull that little stunt because he needed the cash; he’s doing quite well at the moment, so I hear.” She snorted again. “No...he did it because he COULD.  If there’s one thing I know about that bastard, it’s that he loves to see just how much he can get away with.” She gave Drake a dose of the one blue eye, “That...and he enjoys being hurtful.  I found that out the hard way once myself.”

“Yeah...probably right, Y’ Grace.” said the heeler with slightly forced indifference.  Katie wasn’t fooled, she knew what he was thinking; WHY had she never pronounced the Curse of the Duchess on Josslyn Hay?  She certainly had ample reason for it, and since the day when they’d last seen one another, she had acquired more than enough wealth and power to ruin the foxhound a dozen times over.

And it wasn’t just Drake who was keeping that question on his back burner.  Almost everyone Katie knew had puzzled at one time or another over why she had never told The Earl of Errol, ‘I’m not just going to beat you, I’m going to destroy you.’  But never once had anyone just come right out and asked her about it.

If they had, they’d have been surprised by the simplicity of her response

“Does this have anything to do with why her plane was in my hangar?” Katie asked.  Drake nodded at once.

“Yeah...everything.  She’s had to move that plane a dozen times to keep it from bein’ impounded for non-payment of fees.  Same thing with her hotel bill.  An’ that’s why I needed to tell you ‘bout it immediately.  Keith tells me the constable’s about to swear out a warrant on her for defrauding an innkeeper.”

Katie groaned, and began searching in the drawers for another mane comb.

“Christmas, what a bunch of heartless jerks.  You’d think they’d give the poor kid a break.”

Drake cleared his throat again.

“Uh, they did actually.  What I’ve just told you happened back about the second week in July.  Folks here were understanding at first and willing to let Miss Moorefield’s bills slide for a bit, but now here it is the end of August, and she ‘asn’t made good on any single one of ‘em.   Matter of fact, she’s racked up a lot more debts since then...an’ it’s not like she couldn’t pay up if she wanted.  Everyone knows the Moorefield family’s got more than enough cash to cover their daughter’s losses...only the poor little Sheila’s too scared, and/or ashamed to tell ‘em what’s happened.”

Katie turned and regarded herself in the mirror for a second.  She knew a thing or two about shameful secrets, the kind you could never tell anyone, let alone your family.  What would Drake say now, if she told him about the ‘procedure’ she’d had performed in Darwin, Australia?

Well, that had been her own doing, hadn’t it?  No one had tricked her into going there.

Athena Moorefield, on the other hoof...

“Christmas...no wonder she got so mad when I told her I was the DUCHESS of Strathdern.” Katie muttered under her breath.

She turned around again, clapping her hooves against her knees.

“Drake?  At which hotel is Miss Moorefield staying?”

“The Resort Denhaut.” the heeler answered at once. “And if you’re going to have me take care of ‘er hotel bills, I’d suggest yer give me the go-ahead right now.  Once that warrant’s issued on her, she’s as good as deported from the Spontoons, paid-up debts or no.”

“Then get going,” said Katie, nodding appreciatively.  The heeler had been absolutely correct in bringing her the news at once, “and I want her airplane moorage fees covered too, and any restaurant or bar bills...and any casino markers, while you’re at it.  Got that?”

“Yeah...yeah.” said the heeler, looking slightly annoyed as he got to his feet, “Give me a bit of credit please, Y’ Grace.  Course, you’d want it all made good.” His expression became momentarily pensive, “But er...in case y’ want me to take care of it anonymously, I’ll need to hire a couple o’ messengers to handle it.  It’s not exactly unknown round these islands who I work for, y’know.”

“Yes, good thought,” said the pinto mare, pleased that he had anticipated this.  “Go ahead and hire your messengers.  But then as soon as you get Athena Moorfield’s bills squared away, I want you to send her a private message on my behalf, saying I’d like to meet with her, any time, at her convenience.  Don’t tell her I paid her bills, though...but see if you can drop a couple of hints so she’ll at least suspect it was me.”

“Right-o” said Drake, whom she knew would handle it perfectly.

It was at this point that Katie finally located another comb, but instead of setting to work on her mane again, she turned and pointed it at her publicist.

“Only Drake, please make sure Miss Moorefield understands that she is under no obligation to see me, and that she owes me absolutely nothing.  She’s been under the gun enough lately.”

“Will do, Y’ Grace.” said the heeler, reaching for the door, “Anything else before I go?”

Katie’s narrowed slightly, and her voice became as cool as marble slab.

“Yes.  At your leisure, I would like you to see if you can find out the present location of His Grace, the Earl of Erroll.  It looks as if he and I may shortly be renewing our acquaintance.”

“Zanzibar, as of last week.” said Drake Hackett, with a wicked, little smile.  Then he opened the door and strode briskly out of the room.

Meanwhile, Jack Finlayson was also making an exit...from the front lobby of the Tapotobo Hotel.  As he did so, the raccoon was unaware that he was being observed through a pair of especially fine Zeiss binoculars, of a kind reserved for only a privileged few officers of the Luftwaffe.  As one of the rickshaw drivers pulled up his rig up in front of the raccoon, the watcher kept him carefully framed in the lenses.  He was still being observed as he climbed inside the rickshaw and the driver pulled away from the hotel, turning left in the direction of the Blue Pearl Cottage.

The binoculars dropped away, revealing eyes like polished coal, and fur like the plumage of a raven.  Then the glasses disappeared back into their case, as the watcher’s mouth stretched taut in a deep, lupine frown.  The last time she had seen Jack Finlayson had been shortly after General Schlag had thought he’d observed the raccoon trying to pump Professor Willy Messerschmitt for information about the ME-109...and shortly thereafter, the Major had turned up at the Switzerland Circuit of the Alps air race.

Now, here he was in the Spontoon Islands, just in time for speed-week...and where was he going, not thirty minutes after checking into his hotel?  

In the direction of the cottage where Die Herzogin von Strathdern was staying.  Was that merely a coincidence?

Ilsa Klentsch did not believe in coincidences.  Something was going on between those two...and it wasn’t an illicit romance.

She was seated on the terrace of one of Casino Island’s numerous outdoor cafes, this one almost directly across the harbour from the Hotel Tapotobo.  No one seemed to notice what she was up to; in fact no one was paying any attention to her at all.  At this thought, Ilsa smiled inwardly to herself.  Not quite true...she was getting plenty of THAT kind of attention.  But when she’d pulled out the binoculars and pointed them in the direction of South Island, no one sitting near her had so much as batted an eye.  Why should they?   Half the furs on the terrace were carrying either binoculars or a camera.  When Fraulein MacArran had brought new her race-plane in for a landing earlier that morning, she been caught in more lenses than the average film star.

Ilsa felt the hairs on the back of her neck rising at the thought of Katie MacArran.  Like her and Athena Moorefield, the she-wolf also had a secret that she would keep to herself at all costs.

Though she would never admit it to anyone other than herself, Ilsa Klentsch was highly jealous of the pinto mare...and also of that schwaetzen sable-bitch, Major Nadiya Zhorkin, the Soviet race-team’s pilot.

Not of their flying skills...Ilsa was a better pilot than both of them put together as far as she was concerned.  But that was what made it doubly frustrating for the she-wolf -- that two aviatrix’s of a skill inferior to the her own should have been granted HER heart’s desire...to fly in combat.

Not that Ilsa hadn’t tried.  When Germany had come in on Franco’s side in the Spanish Civil war, she had begged, pleaded, cajoled, button-holed, lobbied, petitioned, and badgered every high-ranking officer and Nazi official she knew to be allowed to join the Condor Legion.  She had written monograms, made fursonal appeals, and called in every single favour she was owed.  She had even gone so far as to hint that she might resign her commission if she were not permitted to go to Spain.  It was all to no avail.  Goering flatly refused to let her fly in combat, the reason being that she was too valuable as a race and test pilot to risk losing in a dogfight over the Iberian peninsula.

That had been the OFFICIAL reason her petition to join the Condor Legion was rejected...but Ilsa Klentsch was all too aware of the real one...and also of the identity of the officer behind the decision.  (That was the trouble with having also trained as an intelligence agent...you became just a little TOO adept at ferreting out information.)

Perhaps nowhere in the western world was there as much of a misogynistic attitude towards female fliers as there was in Germany.  The French, the British, the Americans, the Brazilians, the Soviets; all these had lauded their first female fliers as heroines.

Contrast that with what had happened to Melli Beese, Germany’s first aviatrix.  When the young vixen had tested for her pilot’s license in 1911, her mel counterparts had tried to sabotage her plane not once, but twice.  It was an attitude that died hard in Germany.  More than once, back when Ilsa had been competing in soaring competitions, there had been dark mutterings on the part of her male compatriots whenever she’d won.
 
It was the same reason that Luftahrtsflugministerium tended to regard Katie MacArran lightly, because she was a mare rather than a stallion, most Luftwaffe officers viewed her as a wealthy eccentric who dabbled in aviation for the sport of it...not a serious flier like say, Herr Flugmajor Finlayson.  (Nadiya Zhorkin, who was at least a military officer, was taken a little more seriously.)  When the pinto mare had arrived in her new plane, Das Little Engine, Ilsa had been at the German race team’s hangar and had witnessed the reaction first paw; the Luftwaffe furs had greeted the pinto mare’s new racer with a chorus of derisive whistles and catcalls.  Fraulein Herzogin von Strathdern intended to win the Schneider Cup in THAT little plane?   Sheisse, this aircraft couldn’t keep up with der Blitzen, much less his successor.  And in GOLD?  Who did this dizzy little piebald think she was fooling?   Everyone had agreed that when race day came, Flugkapitan Klentsch was going to give Fraulein MacArran a drubbing she would not soon forget.

Ilsa herself wasn’t so certain.  She had read Katie MacArran’s Abwehr dossier, and this mare was no dilettante.  She might be something of a show-horse when it came to competing in a race, but she was also a someone who had made her way as a jungle fighter...literally, and who gave no quarter to those who threatened her.  She was also, Ilsa’s fellow officers seemed to have all-too-conveniently forgotten, a decorated air-combat ace who had flown in THREE wars. (Four, if you counted her battle against the New Guinea air-pirates)  AND she had once held the record for the most air-race victories in a single year; not just by a femme, by anybody...and she still did, if you were willing to overlook certain technicalities.  Ilsa herself had been there in Zurich when the pinto mare had won the third division of the 1935 Switzerland Circuit of The Alps.  It was the first and only time she had ever raced against Katie MacArran...or rather ALMOST raced against her.  The she-wolf had been forced to drop out at the start when the landing gear of her Messerschmitt ME-110 had stubbornly refused to retract.  But there had been two other Luftwaffe planes in the race that day, and Flugkapitan Klentsch could still remember the looks of stunned amazement when Katie MacArran’s race plane, the Pony Express, had crossed the finish line a good thirty seconds ahead of her nearest competitor.

“How soon we forget.” Ilsa had thought, watching Katie’s Schneider Cup racer touch down on the lagoon in a near-perfect landing...and then strode from the hangar in disgust.  The Luftwaffe furs also seemed to have forgotten that the Duchess of Strathdern had designed and built the Pony Express herself.

And Das Little Engine was another of her creations.

But perhaps most unsettling of all, in Ilsa Klentsch’s mind at least, was the fact that Katie MacArran was completely unpredictable; you never knew what she might do next.  In Spain, she had been by turns both ruthless and chivalrous...the latter of which Ilsa had been well aware of long before she had opened the Abwehr’s MacArran file.

And that was something else the ebony-furred she-wolf was determined to keep quiet about.

“But not,” she decided as she raised two fingers to signal for the check, “my suspicions.”

Jack Finlayson, at that moment, was completely ignorant of the fact that Ilsa Kletsch had been observing him.  In point of fact, he wouldn’t have been aware of the she-wolf’s attentions if she had been watching him from two feet away.

It was that damned Hawaiian shirt he had unwisely chosen to wear...or that was how it seemed anyway to the raccoon.  Even though every third male he passed was similarly attired, he still felt as conspicuous as a fly in a glass of milk; this shirt was loud enough to drown out the Cat Cowlloway orchestra.

He settled back in his seat and tried to think of something else.

The rest of the Berlin air-meet had been a bust...or would have been but for a single chance remark.

It had happened a couple of days after the grand banquet and fireworks display, while the Major was watching the aerobatics competition.  By this time, two things had become abundantly clear: 

First, the Nazis WERE keeping him at a safe distance.  Whenever he would attempt to speak to someone in a Luftwaffe uniform, the result was invariably a few moments of unimportant small talk, and then the German hurriedly excusing himself.

Second, for all it’s much vaunted performance, the Me-109 pursuit plane was not air-meet’s star attraction.  That honor went to the Ju-87 Stuka dive-bomber.

“Not that you should be surprised, I daresay Major.” Air Chief Marshall Ballory had told him. “It’s the Stuka that’s the apple of the German public’s eye, believe it or not.  I’m told that when German cubs go to bed at night, they dream of become Stuka pilots rather than fighter pilots.”

The next thing the bear had said was, “Well yes, I agree with you in principle Major...however, I’d not have put it quite so coarsely.”

And so it was the Stuka that was the air meet’s centerpiece.  There were formation flyovers, there were dive-bombing demonstrations; it was Stuka this, Stuka that, Stuka the other.  By the time the day was over, as far as Jack Finlayson was concerned, Hermann Goering and Ernst Udet could both go Stuka their favorite toy where the sun didn’t shine.  The only glimpse he had of an ME-109 was during an all-too-brief fly-over.

The next day was devoted to the aerobatics competition...and here the Major’s impressions ran hot and cold.  Except for the dazzling skill of Ilsa Klentsch, flying her Bücker Jungmeister, nothing he observed was particularly impressive.  At warm-up for the National Air Races, back in 1932, he’d been treated to the sight of Charles ‘Speed’ Holman performing a series of aerial maneuvers in a three-ton Ford Trimotor, an amazing display that one his mechanics had likened to ‘an elephant skipping rope.’

Still, there was Ilsa Klentsch, and watching her perform an almost flawless outside barrel-roll, the raccoon had to acknowledge that her unofficial reputation as Germany’s most proficient flier was more than richly deserved.

“Incredible, isn’t she?” said a voice from beside him.  Jack Finlayson almost jumped.  He hadn’t even noticed when Charles Lindbergh sat down beside him.

“That she is,” the Major concurred, and then laying the back of a paw next to his mouth, he added, “If you really want my opinion though, she’s about the only thing worth watching in this show.”

“Yeah, and her flying’s not bad either.” said a grinning Lucky Lindy, unable to resist the opening, “Still...I don’t know how she does it.  Last month, the Coupe de Meurthe race...today, an aerobatics competition...next month, the Switzerland Circuit of the Alps Race, then the Schneider-Cup  in August.”

It was only by dint of a sheer effort that Jack Finlayson kept his ears from pricking up.  Ilsa Klentsch was entered in another race...BEFORE the Schneider?  She hadn’t said a word to him about it.  He tried to force himself to think; what did he know about the Circuit of The Alps air-race?  The first one had been held two years previously, in 1935.  It consisted of three divisions, the third and most difficult one set out over a 230 mile course around the peaks and through the valleys of the Alps.  Yes, and the winner back then of the coveted third-division trophy had been...

“Isn’t that the race Katie MacArran won back in ‘35?” he asked, trying to keep his voice casual.

“Yep,” said Lindbergh, with a contemptuous sniff, “It was the last win she had before she was caught cheating in the Thompson.”

Now Jack Finlayson’s ears did go up.  Say what you wanted to about the ‘35 Thompson, but Katie MacArran had...CHEATED?  Where the heck had the Lone Eagle gotten that one?   The Major would have loved to inquire further about it, but right now he had more important matters to discuss.

“Which makes it no surprise that the Luftwaffe’s pulling out all the stops for this year’s Circuit of the Alps.” he said, crossing his fingers and rolling the dice.

They came up a seven.

“Oh yes,” said Lindbergh, nodding, “Why else would they be entering a pair of Me-109s in the first and third divisions?”

When Jack Finlayson returned to Britain, the first thing he did was wire Washington, saying he would require a hotel reservation in Zurich for the weekend of July 25th.  ( He knew better than to send it from Berlin. )   This was where the carte blanche he had extracted from FDR truly began to pay off.  With the Switzerland Circuit of the Alps race a little more a month away, rooms in Zurich for that week were about as easy to find as an indiscreet banker.  Nonetheless, within three days of sending his cable, the raccoon not only had a room reserved, but a valid set of press credentials from News-Week magazine, perfect for allowing him to get at least reasonably close to the German racer-planes.

Electing to remain in Europe until the day of the race, the raccoon used his time to great advantage.  He journeyed to Felixestowe, where he was allowed to take the controls of one of the Supermarine S6a race planes, he went to Woolston to observe the Supermarine Spitfire in several test flights... 

...and he also attended the memorial services for Reginald Mitchell, who had passed away shortly after his return to Britain.  It was there that he met Sydney Camm, designer of the Hawker Hurricane, and Barnes Wallis, Katie MacArran’s old mentor, who was currently at work on designing a new torpedo bomber for the Fleet Air Arm.  There were also several former members of the Supermarine race team in attendance, all of whom welcomed their fellow Schneider Cup alumnus like a long, lost brother and were very appreciative of the fact that he had come to pay his respects to the memory of their beloved silver fox.

Well, almost all of them.  When Finlayson had been introduced to Lady Pamela Fenwick, the vixen known as ‘The Patron Saint of British Air-Racing’ had favored him with just two words, “American, yes?” and then looked him over as if he’d just crawled out from under a rock.

Leaving this frigid climate behind, Jack Finlayson hopped across the channel to have a look at the plans for France’s next front-line pursuit plane, the Dewoitine D520.  This aircraft was definitely a mixed bag.  While the D520's performance was certainly in the same class as the 109 and the Spit, (at least on paper) the Dewoitine company’s production methods would have given Harry Hopkins an embolism; all their planes were virtually paw-built, with no modern assembly methods employed.  No more than 20 per month of the outdated Dewoitine D-510 pursuit planes were rolling out of the factory at Toulouse-Blagnac -- while the Messerschmitt assembly line was turning out ten times that many Me-109s.  Most unsettling of all, from Finlayson’s point of view, was the maddeningly slow pace of development on the Dewoitine 520. By rights the first prototype should already have made it’s test flight.

Instead, the plane was barely off the drawing board, almost a year after it’s conception.

On July 21st, the Major boarded a train at the Gare Du Nord railway station in Paris, destination Geneva, and from there to Zurich.

When he arrived, he quickly discovered the Switzerland Circuit of the Alps race was going to be a much more staid affair than either the National Air Races, or the Schneider Cup -- an Apollonian rather than a Dionysian rite.  There were no gaudy aerial displays, no colorful parades, there wasn’t even much in the way of decoration, banners hanging from the street lamps, a few posters placed in shop windows, but that was about it.  Clearly the stolid Swiss burghers felt no need to indulge in puffery about an event that already had Zurich packed to the rafters.  Looking around, Finlayson was amazed that he’d been able to secure lodgings on such short notice, even with the help of Uncle Sam.

Even before he had entrained in Paris, the Major had elected to keep a low profile while observing the Circuit of the Alps.  Now, taking note of the atmosphere surrounding the event, he became even more determined to blend in with the crowd.  Accordingly, he left his uniform in it’s suit-case, kept his press pass in his pocket, and always dressed in the most nondescript suit he owned.  Whenever he left the Haus Zum Kindli hotel, he donned a wide-brimmed felt fedora, keeping it pulled low over his eyes, and took public transportation everywhere he went. 

Incredibly, the ploy worked. (Or so it seemed at the time.)  Not once during his sojourn in Zurich was Jack Finlayson recognized and pestered for an autograph.  There was an added bonus to remaining in the background as well, the raccoon quickly discovered; you overheard a lot of interesting conversations.

One of the first things he learned was that according to conventional wisdom, the Luftwaffe had the event all but sewn up.  Neither the RAF nor the Armee De L’Air were fielding entries and none of the privately funded teams had resources available that even came close to those of the Germans.  The only team which had even a ghost of a chance at beating the Nazis, most furs agreed, was Team Caudron of France, which had stunned the air-race world with their double victory in the Thompson and Greves Trophy Races at the Nationals, last year.

Or rather that HAD been the prevailing opinion before Ilsa Klentsch had handed Team Caudron a humiliating defeat in Coupe Deutsch De Meurthe, only two months previously...and then she had been flying a modified Messerschmitt Me-110, not the faster, nimbler Me-109.

There were a few naysayers of course, regarding the Luftwaffe planes being dead certs.  Several times the raccoon heard pointed reminders of Katie MacArran’s stunning upset in the 1935 contest.  It was an assertion he found puzzling in the extreme.  By the time of the ‘35 Switzerland Circuit of the Alps, Katie MacArran’s Pony Express had won every American air race in which she’d entered it...AND the Isle of Man Air Race and the Coupe Deutsch de Meurthe as well   Yes, her victory in the first Circuit of The Alps had been one for the record books, but how the Hell could anyone call it an upset?   As Finlayson continued to make his rounds of Zurich’s cafes and bars, he began to piece together something of an answer -- the Germans were clearly trying to milk this race for every ounce of propaganda they could get.  Only this time, according to what he overheard, their target was not Britain or the US, but two much smaller nations, Czechoslovakia and Austria, both of whom had sent military delegations to observe the competition.  The more he heard, the more Finlayson was convinced that it was the Germans who were behind the contention that Katie MacArran’s 1935 victory had been an upset; it simply wouldn’t do for their intimidation purposes if the Pony Express had been a serious contender from the outset.

It wasn’t until day before the race that Jack Finlayson got his first close look at an Me-109....on display behind a velvet rope, in front of the Luftwaffe hangar and guarded by a quartet of SS furs, all of them oversized representatives of predatory species, and all of them armed with rifles.  This, in the raccoon’s opinion, was a bad case of overkill.

Or...could it be that the Nazis were pushing the intimidation button again?  Whatever their motives, there wasn’t much to see anyway.  The Messerschmitt racer, stripped of paint and polished to a high luster, was displayed with it’s cowling kept firmly shut.  Nonetheless the Major, with his trained aviator’s eyes, was able to discern a few things about the plane that he had not been aware of before.

First of all, there were the wings, a serious weakness.  Built razor thin, they could accommodate no more than two machine guns at most.  Put together with the pair firing through the prop, ( an impairment to both the cyclic rate of fire and to engine performance in combat ), that gave the Me-109 only four machine guns against the eight of the Spitfire and Hurricane.  True the Me-109 had a 20mm cannon, firing through the propellor shaft, but what the Major knew and most furs didn’t was that this was an unreliable arrangement at best   (He had found that out while visiting Bell Aircraft, where the Airacobra was being developed.)  In Spain, according to Air Chief Marshal Ballory, the 109's propellor cannon had become such a headache that some Condor Legion pilots were removing it from their planes.  That was fine for the Spanish Civil War, where their Soviet-supplied opponents carried only TWO machine-guns, but against the RAF?

“I doubt it.” the Major thought to himself, taking note of the Messerschmitt’s closely spaced landing gear.  That was the other problem with those thin wings -- there was no room for the gear mechanism, except near the fuselage...and because of this, they were required to open inwards, towards each other, rather than outwards.  It was an arrangement that gave the Me-109 a much narrower wheel-base than the Spitfire, making it a plane to keep away from uneven runways and out of the paws of less-than-seasoned pilots.
 
Then there was that tiny canopy, even smaller than Finlayson had expected.  (If he hadn’t known better, he would have sworn that this was a straight-up racer, rather than a modified pursuit-plane.)  Not only would it limit the pilot’s field of vision, as Katie MacArran had pointed out, but it would make flying the Me-109 something of a claustrophobic experience.

The next day, race day, when he saw the Me-109 in flat-out action for the first time, Finlayson’s attitude changed somewhat.  Here, for the first time since his arrival, the raccoon brought out his credentials from News-Week, using them to get into the press box, where the view was far superior to that of the regular crowd.

What he saw confirmed the detail Herr Messerschmitt had let slip during their conversation; the Me-109 really did have the ability to go screaming through a tight turn with no loss of engine power...something that could not be said of the Spitfire.  True, it was not the most stable aircraft the raccoon had ever seen; it was clearly for experienced pilots only.  But in terms of all-around performance, the Messerschmitt Me-109 had the goods over every American pursuit plane then in production -- AND most of the ones in development.

As for the race, it was no contest.  Both Messerschmitts ran away with their divisions.  Ilsa Klentsch took hers with an average speed of 255 mph, 35 mph faster than her nearest competitor.

And yet...as the reporters made their way from the stands Finlayson heard several of them remarking that Katie MacArran and the Pony Express had won the 1935 Circuit of the Alps at an average speed of 257 mph.  The Luftwaffe might have swept all three divisions, but none of their planes had broken any records.

No one would have known that from the way the Germans were strutting around when the trophies when the trophies were awarded; Hermann Goering seemed to think that he had won all three races single-pawed.   And if the Major had only suspected before that the Nazis were planning to use the race as a propaganda tool, now he was certain of it.  Ilsa Klentsch’s victory speech, which had clearly been written for her by someone else, was heavily laced with references to “German steel” and “Aryan might”, and contained at least one left-pawed comment about the Versailles Treaty, “Let the Luftwaffe’s victory here today be a message to those who unfairly sought to deny Germany the right to have an air force...”

She had much more to say than that, but by then Major Finlayson was already on his way back to the Haus Zum Kindli hotel.   He had seen what he came here to see.

On the return train to Paris, he penned the first draft of his report.


next

Aircraft references:

Bücker Jungmeister:
http://www.fighter-collection.com/pages/aircraft/jungmeister/index.php
http://home.clara.net/acf/scale/scale-pics-1/bipes/bucker-jungmeister/bucker-junmeister.html

Dewoitine D-520:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewoitine_D.520



Ilsa Klentsch and Lady Pamela Fenwick are the intellectual property of Richard J. Bartrop, used here with permission.