Toby looked immensely relieved. I could see that, for the moment at
least, he definitely put certain doubts out of his mind. He seemed to
be trying to make up for his spasm of hostility when next he spoke.
“He’s an old pal of mine, anyway, aren’t you, Jimmy? It’s like old
times to see you again. D’you remember that little scrap with a dozen
Huns over Charleroi? That was a good finish-up--the day before the
Armistice.”
I remembered well enough--remembered that after that last fight, at the
very end of the war, I had landed by a miracle with my nerve suddenly
gone. I had never been in the air since--for a long time could not look
at an airplane without a fit of trembling.
Sylvia glanced at me in surprise. The secret humiliation of that finish
had made me pretty close about my war-doings.
“Oh, you two knew each other in the war, then?” she said.
“I should rather think we did!” replied Toby. “Jimmy was my
squadron-leader--and he’s some scientist in the air, let me tell you.”
His tone of admiration smote me like a bitter irony. “Don’t forget
you’re coming to look over that bus of mine tomorrow morning, Jimmy.”
“I don’t know that I can,” I replied. “I’m off back to town tomorrow.”
I said this with a glance to Sylvia which found her quite unmoved.
“Are you, really?” she said. “What, on a _Sunday_?” Her eyebrows went
up in mocking admiration for my courage.
Confound it! I remembered suddenly that tomorrow _was_ Sunday. I can
put up with any reasonable amount of hardship, but the prospect of a
Sunday train on a South Coast railway!
“_Kamerad!_” I surrendered. “I go back on Monday.”
“Good!” said Toby. “The tender conscience of the local municipality
does not permit them to allow me to earn my living on the Sabbath.
Tomorrow is a _dies non_. We’ll spend the morning tinkering about the
machine together. It’ll be like old times, before we went up for a
jolly old scrap with the Hun-bird. She’s worth looking at, too--built
for a radius of a thousand miles and a ceiling of over twenty thousand
feet.”
“Really!” I said, with a touch old-time professional interest. “But
what on earth do you want a machine like that for? She’s surely
scarcely suitable for giving donkey-rides up and down a beach?”
“She does all right,” replied Toby. “And I like to feel that I’ve got
something with power to it. That I could if I wanted to--” His curious
restless eyes lost expression, as though the soul behind them no longer
saw me, contemplated something remote.
“Could what?” I challenged him.
* * * * *
He came back to perception of my presence.
“Eh? Oh, nothing.” He looked at me with that familiar sudden
suspiciousness which seemed to accuse one of attemped espionage into
the secrets of his soul. I remembered that even in the mess, intimate
as we had all been together, he had always been a queer chap. One had
never really known what he was thinking or planning. He turned now to
Sylvia.
“Miss Bryant has promised me that one day she will let me take her for
a flight,” he said, banishing the hardness of his eyes with that little
smile of his which was so peculiarly attractive when he chose to exert
his charm.
“I’ll come tomorrow,” she replied promptly. “And then you’ll have to
take me gratis.”
“Of course I will!” he answered, clutching at her promise with a flash
of eager delight in his eyes. “You didn’t imagine I was going to charge
you for it, did you? That’s settled, then.”
Mrs. Bryant interposed in motherly alarm.
“Oh, Sylvia! Don’t do any of your madcap tricks!--You _will_ be
careful, wont you, Mr. Selwyn?” She turned to me. “Are you sure she
will be safe with him, Jimmy?”
“My dear Mrs. Bryant,” I assured her, “if there is a better pilot in
the world than Toby, I don’t know him.”
Mr. Bryant took the pipe from his mouth and glanced cautiously at his
wife.
“I’d rather like to go up too,” he said.
But Mrs. Bryant vetoed this volubly and emphatically.
“No, no, no!” she exclaimed. “Not two of you together! Suppose anything
happened!”