For a time nothing was heard in the smoking-room but the rustle of the turning papers and the clink of a coffee-cup in a saucer. Sluggishly—for the idleness that had latterly overmastered me tired me to my very marrow—I was comparing Hay's words with what Cecil Hubbard had said on the same subject. "Continuity of manufacture and the training of men"—you might call this "civil" aviation if you liked, but according to both men it was indistinguishable from the question of national defense. And, further, Hubbard, unless I was mistaken, had allowed young Smith some portion of vision in the matter. "It doesn't matter whether he's twenty-four or a hundred-and-four"—"The wind blew whither it list"—"While the old Burleighs had been nodding some youngster had been getting away with the job."

Well, I myself, no longer very young, could only sigh and agree that it seemed to be a young man's business. In other fields of action youth, the cutting-edge, was directed by the experienced hand and the wise head that too has been young in its day; but in this field none but youth has or has had the experience. Its time is short, it reaps its harvest in its Spring. We in the August of our lives may say, "Thus and thus should be done," but a young head shakes and we are silenced. The judgment of an infant answers us. A Samuel speaks, and our lips are closed within our beards. We administer, advise, finance, organize, but his is the mounting heart.

In the midst of my meditation I became aware that I was being spoken to by Mowbray. I told you he was a sculptor. He is no great intimate of Esdaile's, but naturally they are not unacquainted.

"I beg your pardon. What were you saying?" I said.

"This Scepter action. I see it's down on the List. You're a friend of Esdaile's. I suppose it won't affect him in any way?"

"What's the action about?" I asked.

"Here you are. 'The Aiglon Aviation Company v. The Scepter Assurance Corporation.' The Scepter people are resisting the claim on the grounds that the machine had no business to be where it was. They also allege negligence on the pilot's part, or so at least McIlwaine tells me. He's briefed. Is it true you were at Esdaile's when it happened?"

"Yes."

"Do you know the pilot?"

"No. I believe he's away with Esdaile in the country at present."

"Well, he can be getting ready to come back to town. It's down for Trinity term. I should say the whole action turns on him. Worrying sort of thing to have to go through on the top of a bad crash, but the Scepter's got to fight it. If flying ever comes to anything the position's got to be made clear."

"If it comes to anything?" I queried idly....

"Apart from Hay's point of view, I mean. I don't see myself that it's achieved very much yet outside war. Too risky and uncertain altogether. There isn't a flyer on the Rhine at present who'll take his leave by aeroplane; he might lose a day. And if this Atlantic flight does come off it'll be rather like Channel-swimming—done once and then not again for another forty years. Just a record. I can't see there's much more in it yet."

Here Atkinson's voice struck in. I hadn't heard him enter.

"Yes, but what about other places—Australia, for instance? It's catching on there all right from what I'm told. Say you've a station ninety miles from your front door to your back. An aeroplane'll do in an hour or two what it would take you two or three days to do in a buggy. Any number of these fellows are running their private planes now. And we're making the machines."

"And there isn't much doubt they'll be having a go at the Cape-to-Cairo route presently," somebody else remarked. (I am giving this desultory conversation very much as it happened, since I felt exceedingly desultory myself and it all contributed to the impression of Chummy Smith and the nature of his job that was slowly building itself up in my mind.)

"Well, that's a different thing again. I should say the value of that would be largely scientific, at any rate at first. Like the Shackleton and Scott expeditions."

Mowbray laughed. "Are you one of those who think those were primarily scientific?" he asked.

"What else were they?"

Whereupon we had the matter from the point of view of Ronald Mowbray, ex-amateur champion and still the soundest of referees.

"Pure sport and adventure, of course," he replied promptly. "Oh yes, I know somebody put up the money for a lot of instruments, and they took all sorts of observations and kept journals and all the rest of it. I know all that. Quite useful too in its way. But when you get right down to brass tacks those fellows did it because they jolly well wanted to and for no other reason on earth. What's better? Chuck in your science and 'contributions to the sum of human knowledge' as a make-weight if you like, but they weren't just out for that in cold blood. No, nor science books nor lecture-tours either. It was just an epic lark. After all, a fellow's got to have a go at something."

There was a general laugh. It was so very like Mowbray himself. Both in his boxing and his sculpture he was in the habit of "having a go." And that was the end of that rambling conversation as far as I was concerned. One of the waiters approached and bent over my shoulder.

"Lord Glenfield would like to speak to you at the telephone, sir," he said.