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"I SEE that," said Bert, and was smitten silent by a thought. The man with the flat voice talked on, without heeding him, of the strange irony of Butteridge's death. At that Bert had a little twinge of relief he would never meet Butteridge again. It appeared Butteridge had died suddenly, very suddenly. "And his secret, sir, perished with him!
Bert felt acutely cold, but he wasn't mountain-sick; he put on the coat and overcoat and gloves Butteridge had discarded put them over the "Desert Dervish" sheet that covered his cheap best suit and sat very still for a long, time, overawed by the new-found quiet of the world.
The published portraits insisted primarily upon an immense black moustache, and secondarily upon a fierceness behind the moustache. The general impression upon the public was that Butteridge, was a small man.
He began to scheme devices for selling the secret and circumventing Butteridge. What should he ask for the thing? Somehow twenty thousand pounds struck him as about the sum indicated. He fell into that despondency that lies in wait in the small hours. He had got too big a job on too big a job.... Memories swamped his scheming. "Where was I this time last night?"
The solitary rider sat between the wings above a transverse explosive engine, an explosive engine that differed in no essential particular from those in use in the light motor bicycles of the period. Below was a single large wheel. The rider sat astride of a saddle, as in the Butteridge machine, and he carried a large double-edged two-handed sword, in addition to his explosive-bullet firing rifle.
My name's Butteridge. B-U-T-T-E-R-I-D-G-E. Get that right. I'm an Imperial Englishman. I'll talk to you all to-morrow." Foggy snapshots still survive to record that incident. His assistant struggles in a sea of aggressive young men carrying note-books or upholding cameras and wearing bowler hats and enterprising ties.
These are no business of ours, and one remarks with regret that Bert read them. When he had read them he remarked, "Gollys!" in an awestricken tone, and then, after a long interval, "I wonder if that was her? "Lord!" He mused for a time. He resumed his exploration of the Butteridge interior.
They had brought together all the best of the surviving artisans from that region, they had provisioned the park for a siege, and they were urgently building a larger type of Butteridge machine. Bert could get no footing at this work: he was not sufficiently skilled, and he had drifted to Oxford when the great fight occurred in which these works were finally wrecked.
"Still Monty," he said. "Wonder what would happen if you pulled a cord?" "No," he decided. "I ain't going to mess it about." Afterwards he did pull both the ripping- and the valve-cords, but, as Mr. Butteridge had already discovered, they had fouled a fold of silk in the throat. Nothing happened.
Great Britain, it seemed, in an access of meanness, temporised and wrangled with the imperial spirited Butteridge and his extraordinary invention. That also was not in play and could not be for some months at the earliest. From Asia there, came no sign. The Germans explained this by saying the yellow peoples were without invention. No other competitor was worth considering.
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