I will venture to say that the man I followed was never shut out of a tube-lift in his life, however crowded it was. He jostled through the throng about the counter as if it had been so much water. I learned presently that he had had no sort of interest or proprietorship whatever in that ladder that had been passed along Lennox Street. Seeing a ladder approaching he had merely pushed himself forward, had placed himself at the head of it, and, with energetic elbowings and loud cries of "Make way there!" had made it to all intents and purposes his own, squeezing himself in at Esdaile's gate with such nice judgment that the very next man had been shut out. He called this "managing it a treat," and I further gathered that neat things like this usually did happen when Harry Westbury was anywhere about.

The aeroplane accident had at any rate given the licensed trade a fillip that morning. When I asked for a glass of beer I was curtly told, "Only port, sherry and liqueur-brandy—three shillings." Yet many a three shillings was cheerfully paid. Nothing so stimulates conviviality as an undercurrent of tragedy. Apparently half Chelsea had given up all thought of further work before lunch, and in my Saloon Bar there were already 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-room upstairs no doubt he had his private cue in it, as well as his private shaving-pot at the barber's round the corner. For all his freshness and plumpness, there was nothing of the jovial about him. Either he had no humor, or he did not intend that humor should stand in his way through the world. His convex blue eyes were hard and bullying, and his rosebud of a mouth never blossomed into a smile. Probably his wife had a thin time of it. But she would have as good a fur coat as any of her neighbors.

He was holding forth as I drew near on what he called this "Tom, Dick and Harry sort of flying."

"And here you have the proof of it," he was saying, his fingers pronged into four empty glasses and his hard eyes looking defiantly round. "Look at the damage to property alone! What price these air-raids? Three—million—pounds in the City in one night! That's my information as an estate-agent. Three—million—pounds! And now everybody's going to start. 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-shilling brandy. He was "not to a shilling or two" that morning. It was only right that as a spectator from the reserved enclosure he should "put his hand 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. I happened to know him by sight as old William Dadley, the picture-frame maker—"Daddy" of the fledgling artists of the King's Road.

But Westbury would have no weak sentiment of this kind. There was a blood-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 to put his hand in his pocket if they start coming down on top of those houses we're building in Wimbledon or where I live in Lennox Place there? Let 'em break their necks if they want, but not on my roof! The world 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 as I saw fit to make a mental note of. At this stage of our Case he was simply a vain and interfering busybody, who had had a rather better view of things than anybody else. But first of all I noted the obstinacy with which 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 was nothing remarkable here either, except that the living one had "kept on moving his hand all the time like this"—illustrated by an aimless fluttering of the right hand, now a few inches this way, now a few inches that.

But I had an involuntary start when Mr. Westbury pompously announced that he "had offered himself to Inspector Webster as a witness in case he should be wanted." It was, of course, just what such a fellow would do, if only out of vain officiousness, and I don't quite know why I didn'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, what their temper would be if there were very much of this, and similar things; but instead I had apparently hit on some sort of a human bramble, who hooked himself on everywhere with a tenacity out of all proportion to the value of any fruit he was likely to bear, and who would scratch unpleasantly when you tried to dislodge him. There was nothing to be uneasy about, but the whole of the events of that morning were so far inexplicable, and to that extent intimidating.

"Yes, me and Inspector Webster will probably be having a talk about things this evening," Mr. Westbury continued with hearty relish. "We're neighbors in Lennox Place, the very street behind Lennox Street—you can see right across from my bedroom window. So I had my choice of two good views in a manner of speaking.... Five-and-twenty to two. Not worth while going home for lunch now. May as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. I wonder if they've got a snack of anything here?"

If they had I have not the least doubt he got it.