And then, springing from nowhere, sustained one knew not how, came a persistent, disturbing rumour that the problem had been solved, that the secret was known. Bert met it one early-closing afternoon as he refreshed himself in an inn near Nutfield, whither his motor-bicycle had brought him. There smoked and meditated a person in khaki, an engineer, who presently took an interest in Bert's machine. It was a sturdy piece of apparatus, and it had acquired a kind of documentary value in these quick-changing times; it was now nearly eight years old. Its points discussed, the soldier broke into a new topic with, "My next's going to be an aeroplane, so far as I can see. I've had enough of roads and ways.""They TORK," said Bert.
"They talk--and they do," said the soldier.
"The thing's coming--"
"It keeps ON coming," said Bert; "I shall believe when I see it.""That won't be long," said the soldier.
The conversation seemed degenerating into an amiable wrangle of contradiction.
"I tell you they ARE flying," the soldier insisted. "I see it myself.""We've all seen it," said Bert.
"I don't mean flap up and smash up; I mean real, safe, steady, controlled flying, against the wind, good and right.""You ain't seen that!"
"I 'AVE! Aldershot. They try to keep it a secret. They got it right enough. You bet--our War Office isn't going to be caught-napping this time."Bert's incredulity was shaken. He asked questions- and the soldier expanded.
"I tell you they got nearly a square mile fenced in--a sort of valley. Fences of barbed wire ten feet high, and inside that they do things. Chaps about the camp--now and then we get a peep. It isn't only us neither. There's the Japanese; you bet they got, it too--and the Germans!"The soldier stood with his legs very wide apart, and filled his pipe thoughtfully. Bert sat on the low wall against which his motor-bicycle was leaning.
"Funny thing fighting'll be," he said.
"Flying's going to break out," said the soldier. "When it DOEScome, when the curtain does go up, I tell you you'll find every one on the stage--busy.... Such fighting, too!... I suppose you don't read the papers about this sort of thing?""I read 'em a bit," said Bert.
"Well, have you noticed what one might call the remarkable case of the disappearing inventor--the inventor who turns up in a blaze of publicity, fires off a few successful experiments, and vanishes?""Can't say I 'ave," said Bert.
"Well, I 'ave, anyhow. You get anybody come along who does anything striking in this line, and, you bet, he vanishes. Just goes off quietly out of sight. After a bit, you don't hear anything more of 'em at all. See? They disappear. Gone--no address. First--oh! it's an old story now--there was those Wright Brothers out in America. They glided--they glided miles and miles. Finally they glided off stage. Why, it must be nineteen hundred and four, or five, THEY vanished! Then there was those people in Ireland--no, I forget their names. Everybody said they could fly. THEY went. They ain't dead that I've heard tell; but you can't say they're alive. Not a feather of 'em can you see. Then that chap who flew round Paris and upset in the Seine. De Booley, was it? I forget. That was a grand fly, in spite of the accident; but where's he got to? The accident didn't hurt him. Eh? _'E_'s gone to cover."The soldier prepared to light his pipe.
"Looks like a secret society got hold of them," said Bert.
"Secret society! NAW!"
The soldier lit his match, and drew. "Secret society," he repeated, with his pipe between his teeth and the match flaring, in response to his words. "War Departments; that's more like it." He threw his match aside, and walked to his machine. "Itell you, sir," he said, "there isn't a big Power in Europe, ORAsia, OR America, OR Africa, that hasn't got at least one or two flying machines hidden up its sleeve at the present time. Not one. Real, workable, flying machines. And the spying! The spying and manoeuvring to find out what the others have got. Itell you, sir, a foreigner, or, for the matter of that, an unaccredited native, can't get within four miles of Lydd nowadays --not to mention our little circus at Aldershot, and the experimental camp in Galway. No!""Well," said Bert, "I'd like to see one of them, anyhow. Jest to help believing. I'll believe when I see, that I'll promise you.""You'll see 'em, fast enough," said the soldier, and led his machine out into the road.
He left Bert on his wall, grave and pensive, with his cap on the back of his head, and a cigarette smouldering in the corner of his mouth.
"If what he says is true," said Bert, "me and Grubb, we been wasting our blessed old time. Besides incurring expense with thet green-'ouse."5It was while this mysterious talk with the soldier still stirred in Bert Smallways' imagination that the most astounding incident in the whole of that dramatic chapter of human history, the coming of flying, occurred. People talk glibly enough of epoch-making events; this was an epoch-making event. It was the unanticipated and entirely successful flight of Mr. Alfred Butteridge from the Crystal Palace to Glasgow and back in a small businesslike-looking machine heavier than air--an entirely manageable and controllable machine that could fly as well as a pigeon.
It wasn't, one felt, a fresh step forward in the matter so much as a giant stride, a leap. Mr. Butteridge remained in the air altogether for about nine hours, and during that time he flew with the ease and assurance of a bird. His machine was, however neither bird-like nor butterfly-like, nor had it the wide, lateral expansion of the ordinary aeroplane. The effect upon the observer was rather something in the nature of a bee or wasp.
Parts of the apparatus were spinning very rapidly, and gave one a hazy effect of transparent wings; but parts, including two peculiarly curved "wing-cases"--if one may borrow a figure from the flying beetles--remained expanded stiffly. In the middle was a long rounded body like the body of a moth, and on this Mr.
