Sheila was his only home companion and comfort. True, she scolded him severely sometimes. Sometimes she pouted, put on airs, and betrayed defiance. But do not all young girls? If they did not they would be devoid of that true spirit of independence which every woman should possess.
Again he glanced at her while she laughed happily with the young man who loved her, but who had never admitted it. Then he looked across the room, where sat Benyon, a well-known member of the Opposition, with his fat, opulent wife, who had, until recently, been his housekeeper. The eyes of the two men met, and the Cabinet Minister waved his hand in recognition, while the stout, over-dressed woman stared.
Half the people in the restaurant had, by this time, recognised Reginald Monkton by the many photographs which appeared almost daily, for was he not the popular idol of his Party, and did not the Court Circular inform the nation of the frequent audiences he had of His Majesty the King?
“Well, Austin?” asked the Minister, when the waiter had served an exquisitely cooked entrée. “How are things out at Hendon?”
“Oh! we are all very busy, sir. Wilcox is experimenting with his new airship. At last he has had some encouragement from the Government, and we are all delighted. My shops are busy. We sent three planes to Spain yesterday. King Alphonso ordered them when he was over in the early spring.”
“Austin has promised to take me up for a flight one day, dad!” exclaimed the girl enthusiastically. “He wants to ask you if he may.”
Her father did not reply for some moments. Then he said judiciously:
“Well, dear, we must see. Perhaps he might take you just a little way – once round the aerodrome – eh?”
“Of course not far,” said his daughter, glancing significantly at her lover.
“There is no risk, Mr Monkton, I assure you. Miss Sheila is very anxious to go up, and I shall be most delighted to take her – with your consent, of course,” Wingate said. “My suggestion is just a circuit or two around the aerodrome. We are completing a new machine this week, and after I’ve tried her to see all is safe. I’d like to take Sheila up.”
“We must see – we must see,” replied her indulgent father, assuming a non-committal attitude. He, however, knew that in all England no man knew more of aerial dynamics than Austin Wingate, and, further, that beneath his apparently careless exterior with his immaculate clothes and his perfectly-brushed hair was a keen and scientific mind, and that he was working night and day directing the young and rising firm of aeroplane makers at Hendon, of which he was already managing director.
Sheila’s meeting with him had been the outcome of one of his experiments. One afternoon in the previous summer he had been driving a new hydroplane along the Thames, over the Henley course, when he had accidentally collided with a punt which Sheila, in a white cotton dress, was manipulating with her pole.
In an instant the punt was smashed and sunk, and Miss Monkton and her two girl companions were flung into the water. After a few minutes of excitement all three were rescued, and the young inventor, on presenting himself to express his deep regret, found himself face to face with “Monkton’s daughter,” as Sheila was known in Society.
The girl with her two friends, after changing their clothes at the Red Lion, had had tea with the author of the disaster, who was unaware of their names, and who later on returned to London, his hydroplane being badly damaged by the collision.
Six months went past, yet the girl’s face did not fade from Austin Wingate’s memory. He had been a fool, he told himself, not to ascertain her name and address. He had given one of the girls his card, and she had told him her name was Norris. That was all he knew. On purpose to ascertain who they were he had been down to Henley a fortnight after the accident, but as the girls had not stayed at the Red Lion, but were evidently living in some riverside house or bungalow, farther up the river, he could obtain no knowledge or trace of her.
One bright Saturday afternoon in November the usual gay crowd had assembled at the aerodrome at Hendon to watch the aviation, a science not nearly so well developed in 1912 as it is to-day. At the Wingate works, on the farther side of the great open grass lands, Austin was busy in the long shed directing the final touches to a new machine, which was afterwards wheeled out, and in which he made an experimental flight around the aerodrome, which the public, many of them seated at tea-tables on the lawn, watched with interest.
After making several circles and performing a number of evolutions, he came to earth close to a row of smart motor-cars drawn up on the lawn reserved for subscribers, and unstrapping himself sprang gaily out.
As he did so he saw, seated in the driver’s seat of a fine limousine straight before him, a girl in motoring kit chatting with an elderly man who stood beside the car.
The girl’s eyes met his, and the recognition was instantly mutual. She smiled merrily across to him, whereupon he crossed to her, just as he was, in his mechanic’s rather greasy brown overalls, and bowing before her exclaimed:
“How fortunate! Fancy meeting again like this!” Whereupon, with her cheeks flushed with undisguised pleasure, she shook his hand, and then turning to the tall elderly man explained:
“This is the gentleman who smashed our punt at Henley, father! We have not met since.”
“I fear it was very careless of me, sir,” Wingate said. “But I offer a thousand apologies.”
“The accident might have been far worse,” declared the girl’s father, smiling. “So let it rest at that.”
“I had no idea that it was you in the air just now,” exclaimed the girl, and then for ten minutes or so the trio stood chatting, during which time he explained that his works were on the opposite side of the aerodrome, after which he shook hands and left them.
“Whose car is that big grey one, third in the row yonder?” he asked eagerly of one of the gatekeepers, a few moments later.
“Oh, that, sir? Why, that belongs to Mr Reginald Monkton, the Colonial Secretary. There he is – with his daughter.”
So his sweet, dainty friend of the river was daughter of the popular Cabinet Minister!
He drew a long breath and bit his lip. Then climbing back into his machine, he waved father and daughter adieu and was soon skimming across to the row of long sheds which comprised the Wingate Aeroplane Factory.
The young man was sensible enough to know that he could never aspire to the hand of the Cabinet Minister’s daughter, yet a true and close friendship had quickly sprung up between her father and himself, with the result that Wingate was now a frequent and welcome visitor to the cosy old-world house in Mayfair, and as proof the well-known statesman had accepted Austin’s invitation to lunch at the Carlton on that well-remembered day of the Cabinet meeting, the true importance of which is only known to those who were present at the deliberations in Downing Street that morning.
Curious, indeed, were the events that were to follow, events known only to a few, and here chronicled for the first time.
Chapter Two.
The Discovery in Chesterfield Street
In the absence of her father, Sheila Monkton was compelled to entertain her guests at dinner alone. There were three: Sir Pemberton Wheeler and his young dark-haired wife Cicely, an old schoolfellow of Sheila’s, and Austin Wingate.
They were a merry quartette as they sat in the cosy dining-room in Chesterfield Street, a few doors from Curzon Street, waited on by Grant, the white-headed, smooth-faced old butler who had been in the service of Monkton’s father before him.
The house was an old-fashioned Georgian one. Upon the iron railings was a huge extinguisher, recalling the days of linkmen and coaches, while within was a long,