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"No, I've been at Brooklands since two o'clock. But what is it?" "You don't know, then, that a murder was committed in the Innesmore Mansions last night or early this morning?" "Good Lord, no! Who was killed?" "A Mrs. Lester, the lady " "Mrs. Lester, who lives in No. 17?" "Yes." "What a horrible thing! Why, only the day before yesterday I met her on the stairs."
At nearly every street corner little groups of civilians had collected and were talking and gesticulating in a terrified manner. When a big shell came with a hoarse, rattling noise through the air, like a racing motor cycle on the track at Brooklands, they would rush into their homes, panic-smitten. If death winked, and passed them over, out they would creep again.
There were by this time three main centres of aviation in England, apart from Cody, alone on Laffan's Plain. These three were Brooklands, Hendon, and the Isle of Sheppey, and of the three Brooklands was chief. Here such men as Graham Gilmour, Rippen, Leake, Wickham, and Thomas persistently experimented.
"Exactly," he agreed. "I visited Mr. Forbes tonight for the first time. We are mutually interested in aviation. That is why I went to Brooklands today, and the invitation to dinner was the outcome of a letter of introduction given me by Professor Scarth." Then, thinking he had said enough on that point, he described the gray car and its stolid-faced chauffeur to the best of his ability.
Paulhan, flying at Brooklands on November 2nd, accomplished 96 miles in 2 hours 48 minutes, creating a British distance record; on the following day, Henry Farman made a flight of 150 miles in 4 hours 22 minutes at Mourmelon, and on the 5th of the month, Paulhan, flying a Farman biplane, made a world's height record of 977 feet.
The directors, finding in Otley a man who knew his business, whose persuasive powers induced many persons to purchase cars, and whose fearless tests at Brooklands were paragraphed in the daily newspapers, treated him most generously and left everything, even many of their financial affairs, in his hands. Lady Urquhart was, however, an ambitious woman.
Not five minutes afterwards I heard the hum of another car in the distance, and, looking up from my wheel, I saw a great red Mercedes coming down the hillside like a racer at Brooklands. I knew that we were in for it; instinct told me immediately that we had been followed from Frejus or Nice, and that danger was aboard that flyer, and would be up with us in less than two minutes.
We lived chiefly in the open air, on the heath, in the beautiful wood above the meadows of Brooklands, and in the neglected, picturesque inclosure of Portmore Park, whose tenantless, half-ruined mansion, and noble cedars, with the lovely windings of the river Wey in front, made it a place an artist would have delighted to spend his hours in. We haunted it constantly for another purpose.
It is very interesting to note how at a place like Eastchurch or Brooklands the necessary discretion trails the old visceral feeling with it, and how men will hang about, ready to go up, resolved to go up, but delaying. Men of indisputable courage will get into a state between dread and laziness, and waste whole hours of flying weather on any excuse or no excuse.
A French officer called Gilbert took us out to Furnes in his Brooklands racing-car, so that was a bit of an experience too, for we sat curled up on some luggage, and were told to hang on by something. The roads were empty and level, the little seats of the car were merely an appendage to its long big engines.
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