Other memories of Edna clustered round that impression. They led Bert’s mind step by step to an agreeable state that found expression in “I’ll marry ‘ER if she don’t look out.” And then in a flash it followed in his mind that if he sold the Butteridge secret he could! Suppose after all he did get twenty thousand pounds; such sums have been paid! With that he could buy house and garden, buy new clothes beyond dreaming, buy a motor, travel, have every delight of the civilised life as he knew it, for himself and Edna. Of course, risks were involved. “I’ll ‘ave old Butteridge on my track, I expect!”
He meditated upon that. He declined again to despondency. As yet he was only in the beginning of the adventure. He had still to deliver the goods and draw the cash. And before that — Just now he was by no means on his way home. He was flying off to America to fight there. “Not much fighting,” he considered; “all our own way.” Still, if a shell did happen to hit the Vaterland on the underside!…
“S’pose I ought to make my will.”
He lay back for some time composing wills — chiefly in favour of Edna. He had settled now it was to be twenty thousand pounds. He left a number of minor legacies. The wills became more and more meandering and extravagant….
He woke from the eighth repetition of his nightmare fall through space. “This flying gets on one’s nerves,” he said.
He could feel the airship diving down, down, down, then slowly swinging to up, up, up. Throb, throb, throb, throb, quivered the engine.
He got up presently and wrapped himself about with Mr. Butteridge’s overcoat and all the blankets, for the air was very keen. Then he peeped out of the window to see a grey dawn breaking over clouds, then turned up his light and bolted his door, sat down to the table, and produced his chest-protector.
He smoothed the crumpled plans with his hand, and contemplated them. Then he referred to the other drawings in the portfolio. Twenty thousand pounds. If he worked it right! It was worth trying, anyhow.
Presently he opened the drawer in which Kurt had put paper and writing-materials.
Bert Smallways was by no means a stupid person, and up to a certain limit he had not been badly educated. His board school had taught him to draw up to certain limits, taught him to calculate and understand a specification. If at that point his country had tired of its efforts, and handed him over unfinished to scramble for a living in an atmosphere of advertiseinents and individual enterprise, that was really not his fault. He was as his State had made him, and the reader must not imagine because he was a little Cockney cad, that he was absolutely incapable of grasping the idea of the Butteridge flying-machine. But he found it stiff and perplexing. His motor-bicycle and Grubb’s experiments and the “mechanical drawing” he had done in standard seven all helped him out; and, moreover, the maker of these drawings, whoever he was, had been anxious to make his intentions plain. Bert copied sketches, he made notes, he made a quite tolerable and intelligent copy of the essential drawings and sketches of the others. Then he fell into a meditation upon them.
At last he rose with a sigh, folded up the originals that had formerly been in his chest-protector and put them into the breast-pocket of his jacket, and then very carefully deposited the copies he had made in the place of the originals. He had no very clear plan in his mind in doing this, except that he hated the idea of altogether parting with the secret. For a long time he meditated profoundly — nodding. Then he turned out his light and went to bed again and schemed himself to sleep.
6
The hochgeboren Graf von Winterfeld was also a light sleeper that night, but then he was one of these people who sleep little and play chess problems in their heads to while away the time — and that night he had a particularly difficult problem to solve.
He came in upon Bert while he was still in bed in the glow of the sunlight reflected from the North Sea below, consumng the rolls and coffee a soldier had brought him. He had a portfolio under his arm, and in the clear, early morning light his dingy grey hair and heavy, silver-rimmed spectacles made him look almost benevolent. He spoke English fluently, but with a strong German flavour. He was particularly bad with his “b’s,” and his “th’s” softened towards weak “z’ds.” He called Bert explosively, “Pooterage.” He began with some indistinct civilities, bowed, took a folding-table and chair from behind the door, put the former between himself and Bert, sat down on the latter, coughed drily, and opened his portfolio. Then he put his elbows on the table, pinched his lower lip with his two forefingers, and regarded Bert disconcertingly with magnified eyes. “You came to us, Herr Pooterage, against your will,” he said at last.
“‘Ow d’you make that out?” asked Bert, after a pause of astonishment.
“I chuge by ze maps in your car. They were all English. And your provisions. They were all picnic. Also your cords were entangled. You haf’ been tugging — but no good. You could not manage ze balloon, and anuzzer power than yours prought you to us. Is it not so?”
Bert thought.
“Also — where is ze laty?”
“‘Ere! — what lady?”
“You started with a laty. That is evident. You shtarted for an afternoon excursion — a picnic. A man of your temperament — he would take a laty. She was not wiz you in your balloon when you came down at Dornhof. No! Only her chacket! It is your affair. Still, I am curious.”
Bert reflected. “‘Ow d’you know that?”
“I chuge by ze nature of your farious provisions. I cannot account, Mr. Pooterage, for ze laty, what you haf done with her. Nor can I tell why you should wear nature-sandals, nor why you should wear such cheap plue clothes. These are outside my instructions. Trifles, perhaps. Officially they are to be ignored. Laties come and go — I am a man of ze worldt. I haf known wise men wear sandals and efen practice vegetarian habits. I haf known men — or at any rate, I haf known chemists — who did not schmoke. You haf, no doubt, put ze laty down somewhere. Well. Let us get to — business. A higher power” — his voice changed its emotional quality, his magnified eyes seemed to dilate — “has prought you and your secret straight to us. So!” — he bowed his head — “so pe it. It is ze Destiny of Chermany and my Prince. I can undershtandt you always carry zat secret. You are afraidt of roppers and spies. So it comes wiz you — to us. Mr. Pooterage, Chermany will puy it.”
“Will she?”
“She will,” said the secretary, looking hard at Bert’s abandoned sandals in the corner of the locker. He roused himself, consulted a paper of notes for a moment, and Bert eyed his brown and wrinkled face with expectation and terror. “Chermany, I am instructed to say,” said the secretary, with his eyes on the table and his notes spread out, “has always been willing to puy your secret. We haf indeed peen eager to acquire it fery eager; and it was only ze fear that you might be, on patriotic groundts, acting in collusion with your Pritish War Office zat has made us discreet in offering for your marvellous invention through intermediaries. We haf no hesitation whatefer now, I am instructed, in agreeing to your proposal of a hundert tousand poundts.”
“Crikey!” said Bert, overwhelmed.
“I peg your pardon?”
“Jest a twinge,” said Bert, raising his