A Case in Camera
as young as they, but they have not been as old as I, and I know this
but they do not. Young women--that is another matter, and I will make a
very candid confession. I now envy these youngsters their youth. I
envied Smith his youth. Despite his limp, I was conscious of his
tallness and lissomness as he hobbled by my side. And I will add that it
is not an unmixed joy to be asked to do a young goddess's shopping for
her because you are "quite the kindest person she knows."
It would hardly be true to say that my acquaintance with young Smith had
made no progress at all. I had made quite a number of interesting
observations on his idyll of petrol, love and crime. But he for his part
was still at the stage of apology for his "neck" in asking Joan to ask
me to buy his pipes and tobacco for him, and by way of leveling up the
obligation had actually sent for a copy of that dandy book that I as a
novelist must on no account miss, _The Crimson Specter of Hangman
Hollow_. But I was still "Sir" to him and he hardly "Chummy" to me, and
our small-talk was quite small. It was certainly small enough as we left
the thymy hollow and slowly made for the cliff-tops.
"Tell me if I walk too quickly for you," I said. His hurt was to his
right ankle, and his stick left a trail of little round holes in the
turf.
"Oh, that's all right, thanks, sir," he said cheerfully, pegging away;
and he added with a chuckle, "I say, between you and I, old Philip was
rather in a paddy, wasn't he?"
"Between you and me he was," I said. I corrected him quite deliberately.
Now that the failure of the sparking-plug had put this opportunity into
my hands I was determined at all costs to know more of him. Hence
my--well _grossièreté_. But he noticed nothing. Instead he broke out
with a feigned enthusiasm.
"I say, these pipes are turning out jolly well! Lovely bit of straight
grain this one! You do know how to choose a pipe, sir! Are they French
or Italian briar?"
"French."
"Jolly nice bit of root!"
"I'm very glad."
"Cool as a nut. Joan's quite right about my smoking too many cigarettes.
They're all right for the street--I hate to see a fellow smoking a pipe
in the street--and gaspers smell a bit sickly to other people sometimes,
don't you think?"
I agreed with this too.
"I suppose the _Specter_ hasn't turned up yet?" was his next effort, as
he sat down to rest for a minute.
"Not yet."
"I do hope it isn't out of print. How soon does a book go out of print,
sir--on an average?"
Weakly I thought of "Why does the razorbill razorbill?" and, I am
afraid, found nothing to reply....
Then, as he continued to babble laboriously across the gulf that
separated us, I remembered again certain tubular parcels that arrived
for him by post, which, when stripped of their wrappings, turned out to
contain the _Transactions_ and _Proceedings_ of this Society or that.
Seeing these left lying about I had peeped into them, and had been
brought up standing against such intimidating fences as the following:--
"_Aerofoil Sections in relation to Speed Range._"
"_Influence of Wave-friction on Aerodynamic Resistances._"
"_Notes on Lateral Stability._"
My simple literary mind faints in regions such as these. His presumably
did not. This apparently was his ordinary reading, the _Specter_ his
relaxation.
"--amber beads," the words came across the void that separated soul from
soul. "Just the shade I meant--neither too yellow nor too brown--I'm
afraid it took up an awful lot of your time----"
It was here that I took my plunge.
"What," I said, looking steadily at him, "is the Influence of
Wind-friction on Aerodynamic Resistance?"
His jaw dropped, as well it might. I knew that for a moment he was
wondering whether I had taken leave of my senses.
"Eh?" he said.
I repeated the question. Of course, I no more wanted information about
Aerodynamic Resistance than I did about briar pipes and amber beads. It
was information about Charles Valentine Smith that I wanted and intended
to have.
I date my possession of him from the moment that that look of
consternation came into his face. It broke upon me that I had put him
into some position that he felt he must immediately explain. Indeed he
half rose, as if, having obtained my acquaintance under false pretenses,
he must set himself right or leave me.
"Oh, I say, sir!" he broke anxiously out. "Do you mean those Journals
and things?"
"That's what I had in my mind. Especially the blue-covered ones."
"Oh lord! You don't suppose I can make head or tail of _those_!"
"Not make head or tail of them? But I've seen you reading them."
He seemed positively sick to extricate himself from my too flattering
opinion of him.
"_Me_ understand all _that_! I could kick myself if you think that! Why,
that's all designers' stuff--they've got brains, those chaps--shiploads
of them--why, I should never have heard of the things but for----" He
checked himself.
"But----" I began, puzzled.
He was blushing--blushing like a young girl.
"I know," he said. "I feel a most awfully ass. The fact is, sir, I just
moon over those things, lose myself in 'em, sort of. I don't know the
first thing about 'em. Of course, there are bits here and there--engines
and practical flying and all that--I know a bit about that--what I mean
to say is, a fellow doesn't want to miss anything--it's hard to
explain----"
On the contrary: it was not at all hard to explain. Simply, I had caught
him day-dreaming. That vivid color still in his cheeks told me that I
had stumbled on a privacy. A young girl approaching womanhood knows
these soft _oubliances_, these shy yet hardy excursions of the spirit
that lead nowhither and die of their own over-sweetness. It is love of
which she dreams; and this was his equivalent. He just "mooned." It was
not understanding--he "didn't want to miss anything." His was not a
technician's, but a poet's nature. And caught unawares he blushed.
"Of course my real job would be one of these Expeditions," he mumbled.
I pursued him relentlessly. "Which Expeditions?"
"Well, between you and I, they've started work on several of them. In
Africa and India and places. You see I'm awfully keen on Air-geography.
If this dashed ankle of mine ever gives me a chance again, that is.
Bobby always said that was my line of country. He was the chap for the
technical end. Thought in surds, Bobby did. He put me on to all those
Journals and things, and--after--well, I sort-of keep it up. _He_ was
your man for that."
"By Bobby do you mean your friend Maxwell?"
"Yes. Bobby," he replied, his eyes far out over the sea.
III
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