He spoke the name with the most perfect readiness and simplicity; there was neither tremor in his voice nor the faintest sign of pain in his dark and steady eyes. He was not even self-conscious under my (I admit) prolonged and deliberate gaze. By what mystery of self-absolution he had expunged the sinister fact for which Esdaile vouched I could not tell. He repeated Bobby's name.

"Yes, Bobby was your man for all that. Fearfully hot stuff. When Bobby opened his mouth I used to dry up."

Then, still without removing my eyes from him, "I never knew Bobby," I said. "But I know a man who did."

He turned to me swiftly. "Who was that?" he demanded.

"A man called Hanson. An Australian. He says he knew him in Gallipoli."

His brows were knitted. "Hanson? Hanson? What was his other name?"

"Dudley."

"Hanson? Hanson? Did he say he knew me?"

"He wasn't sure. He thinks he ran across you. He knew you by sight, anyway, for he described you to me."

"Hanson? No, I give it up. Don't remember him at all. You met such crowds of chaps, you see—sometimes it's just like a dream——"

I appreciated that; but there still remained one thing that was no dream. This was Philip's explicit declaration, "Oh, he remembers all right—it was the other I didn't tell him—that anybody else knew." Philip might now be resolved to let the whole affair sink into oblivion, but Philip after all had not shot anybody. On that morning when I had had my talk with Mackwith I had been rather pleased with my acumen in pointing out that whether our Case had legal consequences or not its moral consequences were inescapable. Yet here, if I could believe my own eyes, was a man who was escaping them in their entirety. He continued to order Journals that Bobby had "put him on to," and could speak of his victim apparently out of some transcendental state of mind where sorrow was an anomaly and regret beside the mark. It all appeared to be admirable, but I found it quite incomprehensible.

"But," I came out of my reverie presently, "you haven't yet told me what 'it' was that Bobby knew all about."

"Do you mean those books?" he asked.

"No, I don't mean the books at all. I know a good deal about books. You can get so soaked in them that you make a whole artificial world out of them, quite self-contained, logical with itself at every single point, and absolutely out of touch with anything that really matters. Do you see what I mean?"

I wasn't sure that he did, and here was I, who do not talk easily to young men, quite anxious that he should.

"Well, let's put it another way. You say Bobby knew all about these equations and diagrams and things. Did he know what it was all for—really for—not just wind-resistance or whatever you call it, but something more—why there should be aeroplanes at all, for example?"

I had said it badly, but I saw his brow clear. There was a kindling in the eyes he turned to me.

"It's funny you should say that," he said in a rather low voice, "because that's just what Bobby himself used to say. He used to say that anybody who'd passed his matric. could do what he did, and he always would have it that I was the whole show. I didn't agree with him, of course, but—is that what you mean?"

"It is so far," I said. "What else did he say?"

"Well, he always said it was a jolly good thing I wasn't technical. And I did see what he meant by that. I mean to say things are simple really, the big things I mean. You take the sea——" again his eyes wandered far out over it. "People talk an awful lot of bunk about the sea. They think bases are just harbors and ports and coaling-stations and so on. That a base is something fixed. Why, that's exactly what it isn't. You've got to get your coal and oil and stores, of course, but that's only like going into a shop and coming out again as quick as you can. It's only then that the job really begins. I'm afraid I'm talking an awful lot, sir, but I got it down to this: that a ship's only a ship when she's moving. She's no better than a stupid old breakwater when she isn't. I mean to say her real base is her course. Just an imaginary line to make a dash from and turn up where the trouble is. Focal points I believe they call 'em. At least that's the way I worked it out for myself."

"And do you mean the air's the same, or going to be?"

The look that I have ventured to call discontent came into his eyes.

"Well, nothing's quite the same as anything else, of course. But I do think this. There's Germany. Over there——," he nodded out to sea. "North Sea or German Ocean we used to call that, and that was there she said her future was. Well, it isn't, of course. She hasn't got any coast to speak of, and isn't going to have any. But——"

And this time his eyes went aloft to the immeasurable fields of the air.

"She's got just as much of that as anybody else. Taking a perfectly sound line about it too. And what's the good of our saying she shan't build aircraft as long as the damn dog doesn't know? Of course she'll build aircraft. That's where her future is now, and she can afford to hand over ships. But every Zepp or plane you get out of her you'll have to get with a pair of pincers. Then ... swift? Swift won't be the word.... Oh, don't I wish I could get on one of these Expeditions!"

I made no comment on this, since I know nothing about the air. These were merely the words of Charles Valentine Smith, who did.