"Better hurry them up.... At least seven of them are to frame too."
"Then there's Monty and Audrey, what about them? When you offer people ahouse----"
But at this one of Mrs. Cunningham's slender hands was imploringlyraised. Her small mouth was parted in appeal.
"Oh, please! Don't think of that! I should be miserable if I thoughtthat was going to make any difference!"
"But of _course_ it makes a difference!" Mollie declared. "All yourthings will be coming here, all your things for the wedding, and anywayyou won't want Philip hanging about the place. Better never have offeredthe house at all!"
"Oh--for a day or two--I shan't be in the way," said Philip uneasily.
But it was awkward for all that. If Esdaile had offered his house to oneof his more prosperous friends he would not have hesitated to sayfrankly that he was sorry, but something unforeseen had happened, andthe hospitality must be considered "off." But this was different. It wasknown that these two were the reverse of well-off. Monty as a matter offact had already given up his rooms in Jubilee Place, and I had gatheredat breakfast that Mrs. Cunningham only intended to occupy herbed-sitting-room in Oakley Street for a very few days longer. There washer story, too, which I shall come to presently. Philip's decisioncertainly upset a number of minor arrangements.
"Oh, it's too ridiculous!" Mollie declared again with vexation. "If itmeans that the wedding's to be put off I don't feel like going away atall."
But Philip only continued to mumble soothingly that it would be quiteall right, and it wasn't for long, and nobody had said anything aboutputting off the wedding. The situation looked rather like a deadlock,and Mackwith already had his silk hat in his hand and the Commander'swhite-topped cap was tucked under his upper arm. Whether Philip went orstayed was a private family matter after all.
But as we were on the point of taking our leave yet another significantlittle trifle was added to all the rest. And again Monty Rooke providedthe occasion.
Monty, I ought to say, is one of these fellows who, whenever any odd jobis to do, especially a domestic one, instinctively seems to take it uponhimself. I dare say his living in rooms and studios hardly big enough toturn around in has made him methodical in his habits. It was Monty, forexample, who had looked out the train in the Time Table; it was Montywho had picked up the jar of curacao when Esdaile had let it fall to thefloor; and it was Monty who, just as the rest of us were leaving,wandered off towards the studio, presently returned again, sought thekitchen, and reappeared with a sweeping-brush.
"What are you going to do with that?" Philip asked, seeing him makingfor the studio again.
"I thought I'd just sweep up that broken glass," Monty replied.
"Better leave it," Philip answered.
Monty carried the brush back to the kitchen again, and presentlywandered off to the studio once more. Esdaile must have had eyes in theback of his head, for I, who was facing the studio, had not seen Montypreparing to draw back the roof-blinds again.
"I wouldn't bother about that just at present," Esdaile called ratherloudly. "Just see if there's a train about tea-time, do you mind?"
Monty, once more returning, took up the Time Table again. Philip walkedwith us to the door. Then another little exclamation broke from him.Monty had put down the Time Table and had asked him for the cellar key.
"What on earth do you want the cellar key for?" Philip demanded.
"To put this jar of stuff back," Monty replied. "It won't be wantednow."
Hereupon Philip broke out with a petulance that struck me as entirelydisproportionate, if indeed there had been any occasion for petulance atall.
"Oh, we can do that any time. We've got all the rest of the day toourselves, haven't we? Sit down and smoke a cigarette or something;you've done about enough for one morning----"
It was then that we left.
PART II
WHAT HAPPENED OUTSIDE
I
It may have already struck you that while Esdaile, a responsiblehouseholder directly interested in any unusual occurrence on hispremises, had not once been into his garden to see what the trouble was,I myself, a journalist with quite a good "news story" in the wind, hadshown little more eagerness. Well, I will explain that. In the firstplace, we have our own reporters, who do that kind of thing far betterthan I can. Next, however interesting things outside might have been, Ihad found them quite interesting enough inside. But my real reason wasthis:--
Rooke had said that both these aviators were civilians. Well, as regardscivilian flying, we on the _Circus_ had something that for want of abetter name I will call a policy. To speak quite frankly, this policywas a supine one enough, and merely consisted in waiting for a definitelead.
As you know, no such thing as a definite lead existed. Except for warpurposes, the future use of flying was at that time the blankest ofblanks. It is true we talked a good deal about it, but that was merelyour highly specialized way of saying nothing and filling space at thesame time. Nobody admitted this lack more readily than those who haddrawn up the provisional Regulations. These were merely experimental,any accident might change them at any moment, and, in one word, all ourexperience was still to be earned.
For this reason, I was just as much interested in opinion about thefacts as I was in the facts themselves, and already I was lookingforward to an exchange of views with Hubbard and Mackwith.
But time had flown. Both Hubbard and Mackwith had appointments for whichthey were already late, the one at the Admiralty, the other in theTemple. I therefore parted from them at Sloane Square Station, and,being in no great hurry myself, turned back along King's Road. What Iwas in search of was a representative public-house. We have all heard of"the man in the street." You often get even closer to the heart ofthings when you listen to the man in the pub.
I think it was the sight of a plumpish young man in a horsey brown coatthat settled my choice of pub. For a moment I couldn't remember where Ihad seen that or a similar coat before; then it flashed upon me. A manin just such a coat had preceded that ladder that had been passed overthe heads of the crowd in Lennox Street, and he or somebody very likehim had managed to get inside Esdaile's gate and to secure a privilegedposition within a few feet of the mulberry tree in which the parachutehad lodged.
I followed this coat through two glittering swing-doors a little wayround the corner from the King's Road, and found myself in aclosely-packed Saloon Bar full of tobacco-smoke and noise.
II
I will venture to say that the man I followed was never shut out of atube-lift in his life, however crowded it was. He jostled through thethrong about the counter as if it had been so much water. I learnedpresently that he had had no sort of interest or proprietorship whateverin that ladder that had been passed along Lennox Street. Seeing a ladderapproaching he had merely pushed himself forward, had placed himself atthe head of it, and, with energetic elbowings and loud cries of "Makeway there!" had made it to all intents and purposes his own, squeezinghimself in at Esdaile's gate with such nice judgment that the very nextman had been shut out. He called this "managing it a treat," and Ifurther gathered that neat things like this usually did happen whenHarry Westbury was anywhere about.
The aeroplane accident had at any rate given the licensed trade a fillipthat morning. When I asked for a glass of beer I was curtly told, "Onlyport, sherry and liqueur-brandy--three shillings." Yet many a threeshillings was cheerfully paid. Nothing so stimulates conviviality as anundercurrent of tragedy. Apparently half Chelsea had given up allthought of further work before lunch, and in my Saloon Bar there werealready signs that more than a few would make a day of it.
And so bit by bit I managed to edge myself nearer to Mr. Harry Westbury.
I dare say you know the kind of man. If the house had a billiard-roomupstairs no doubt he had his private cue in it, as well as his privateshaving-pot at the barber's round the corner. For all his
freshness andplumpness, there was nothing of the jovial about him. Either he had nohumor, or he did not intend that humor should stand in his way throughthe world. His convex blue eyes were hard and bullying, and his rosebudof a mouth never blossomed into a smile. Probably his wife had a thintime of it. But she would have as good a fur coat as any of herneighbors.
He was holding forth as I drew near on what he called this "Tom, Dickand Harry sort of flying."
"And here you have the proof of it," he was saying, his fingers prongedinto four empty glasses and his hard eyes looking defiantly round. "Lookat the damage to property alone! What price these air-raids?Three--million--pounds in the City in one night! That's my informationas an estate-agent. Three--million--pounds! And now everybody's going tostart. What I want to know is, is it peace or war we're living in?That's what I want to know!"
He also wanted to know whether it was the same again--the three-shillingbrandy. He was "not to a shilling or two" that morning. It was onlyright that as a spectator from the reserved enclosure he should "put hishand down."
"I wasn't thinking of property; I was thinking of those two poor lads,"a gray old man said from his seat near the automatic music-box. Ihappened to know him by sight as old William Dadley, the picture-framemaker--"Daddy" of the fledgling artists of the King's Road.
But Westbury would have no weak sentiment of this kind. There was ablood-and-iron ring in his voice as he set the brandy down.
"Poor lads be blowed!" he said. "They know the risks, don't they?They're paid for it, I suppose? What I want to know is who's going toput his hand in his pocket if they start coming down on top of thosehouses we're building in Wimbledon or where I live in Lennox Placethere? Let 'em break their necks if they want, but not on my roof! Theworld isn't going to stop for a broken neck or two. I _don't_ think!"
"Well, tell us all about it, Harry," somebody said; and Mr. Westbury,taking the middle of a small circle, did so.
I am not going to trouble you with all he said, but only with as much asI saw fit to make a mental note of. At this stage of our Case he wassimply a vain and interfering busybody, who had had a rather better viewof things than anybody else. But first of all I noted the obstinacy withwhich he dwelt on the fact that Monty Rooke had been first on the roof,several minutes before the arrival of the police. There was, of course,nothing in this, excepting always Westbury's dull insistence on it.
Next, he described in detail the bringing-down of the two men. There wasnothing remarkable here either, except that the living one had "kept onmoving his hand all the time like this"--illustrated by an aimlessfluttering of the right hand, now a few inches this way, now a fewinches that.
But I had an involuntary start when Mr. Westbury pompously announcedthat he "had offered himself to Inspector Webster as a witness in casehe should be wanted." It was, of course, just what such a fellow woulddo, if only out of vain officiousness, and I don't quite know why Ididn't like the sound of it. I had gone into that Saloon Bar to glean,if possible, what people at large thought of flying over London, whattheir temper would be if there were very much of this, and similarthings; but instead I had apparently hit on some sort of a humanbramble, who hooked himself on everywhere with a tenacity out of allproportion to the value of any fruit he was likely to bear, and whowould scratch unpleasantly when you tried to dislodge him. There wasnothing to be uneasy about, but the whole of the events of that morningwere so far inexplicable, and to that extent intimidating.
"Yes, me and Inspector Webster will probably be having a talk aboutthings this evening," Mr. Westbury continued with hearty relish. "We'reneighbors in Lennox Place, the very street behind Lennox Street--you cansee right across from my bedroom window. So I had my choice of two goodviews in a manner of speaking.... Five-and-twenty to two. Not worthwhile going home for lunch now. May as well be hung for a sheep as alamb. I wonder if they've got a snack of anything here?"
If they had I have not the least doubt he got it.
III
Musingly I mounted an eastward-bound bus and sought my office. The moreI thought things over the less able I became to shake off the sense ofaccumulating trifles, of gathering events. And it was as I passedthrough Pimlico that yet another incident, temporarily forgotten, cameback into my mind. This was the curious way in which Esdaile hadsnapped--it had been a snap--when Rooke had wanted to sweep up thebroken picture-glass, to draw the studio blinds back again, and toreturn the bottle of curacao to its place in the cellar. "You've doneenough for one morning," Esdaile had said. What had Monty done that was"enough"?
Now I have known Monty Rooke, as I told you, for a dozen years, and inthat time I have learned not to be surprised at anything he doesprovided it is sufficiently out of the way, unprofitable to himself, andunlike anything an ordinary person would have done. I will give you aninstance of what I mean.
A year or two before there had arrived one night at his studio a bundleof washing, fresh from the laundry. This bundle, on being opened, hadproved to contain a fully-developed infant girl of a fortnight old, nodoubt the pledge of some unknown laundrymaid's betrayed trust. As a jokeyou will see the possibilities of this, particularly in the merryChelsea Arts Club; but don't imagine that Monty was a butt. What he didwas enough to dispel that idea. He had immediately wanted to adopt thefoundling, and would certainly have done so but for the strongdissuasion of his friends; whereupon he had made a drawing instead, adrawing quite singular for its wistfulness and emotion and depth, of theinfant just as it had arrived, with the newly-ironed shirts and socksfor its cot, deriving none knew whence, cast for none knew what part inLife, save for Monty friendless, the close of one obscure drama but thebeginning of another.
That was Monty, our little friend of the warm, unprofitable impulses,the shy and easily daunted manner, but also of the quiet persistence ofpurpose that kept him afloat in his seas of petty difficulties andenabled him once in a while to produce a drawing or a painting that youreturned to again and again, a bit of philosophy that cut clean down tothe quick of things, or--an indiscretion that it would hardly haveoccurred to one in a million to commit.
What was there between him and Esdaile now?
IV
The moment I reached the office I rang up the _Record_, our eveningsheet. But their reporters were still out, and nobody could yet tell meanything about the accident I didn't already know. Willett, my youngcolleague on the _Circus_, did not propose to give the story exceptionaltreatment.
"If the thing caught fire in the air we'll let it alone," he said."Fire's too much of a bugbear. We want the joy-riding idiot and thelunatic who stunts over towns. I'm for letting it alone, but we'll waitand see what the others do."
He was quite right. On its merits as Publicity it looked as if we shouldhear little more of the Case. I settled down to my work.
I had not actually expected that Hubbard would ring me up, but I was notgreatly surprised when, at about four o'clock, he did so. He wanted toknow whether I could go round to the Admiralty at once. That we musthave a talk at the earliest possible moment was a foregone conclusion. Itherefore replied that I would be on my way in ten minutes, and, hastilyswallowing the cup of tea that had been placed on my desk and tellingWillett to carry on, I took up my hat and stick, sought the lift,threaded my way through the _Record's_ carts and bicycles and boarded apassing motor-bus in Fleet Street.
I had no very clear notion of the nature of the job that kept Hubbard intown that spring, and that had caused him to envy Esdaile his luck inbeing able to get away into the country. Indeed, I can tell you verylittle about the organization of that mysterious Service that moves,familiar yet isolated, in our midst. I understood that originally he hadbeen a torpedo man, but had later been drafted into the Inventionsbranch. It is quite possible that the scope of his work had beenexpressly left rather ill-defined. So many amazing extemporizations hadto be hurriedly made and applied.
Still, these war-improvisations have to be overhauled
afterwards, sothat it may be seen which disappear with the emergency, and which are tobe permanently incorporated in the strategy of the future; and I knewthat one at any rate of Hubbard's tasks was to explain to a certainParliamentary Committee a number of technical and basic facts that havea way of not varying very much however the political situation maychange.
I found him alone in his room on the third floor. The screen just withinthe door was so disposed that, in the spot to which your eyes naturallyturned on entering, the officer you had come to see was not. They areold in cunning in the Senior Service, and I had never seen Hubbard atwork before. His voice came to me from quite a different part of theroom, and I had the feeling that if I had been a stranger there wouldhave been a moment in which I should have been pretty thoroughly lookedup and down.
"Come in and take a pew," he said. "Hope I haven't fetched you away fromanything important. But I couldn't stop to talk this morning. I only gotrid of my By-election Blighters half an hour ago. Well----"
And, as I sat down in the chair at the end of his desk, he plungedstraight into the matter by asking me how long I had known Esdaile.
Now how long you have known a man, in the sense of how well you knowhim, is not always simply a matter of time. I have told you how humdrummy own War services were. They had not included those incredible momentsof intensified action that may more truly reveal a man to you than yearsof desultory familiarity. It was plainly something of this kind thatHubbard had in his mind now. He frowned as he trifled with apaper-weight.
"No, it's absolutely unaccountable," he broke out suddenly, putting thepaper-weight down with a slap. "He's not that kind of man. It simplydoesn't fit in."