ort. It was an old invention, but new to Bert. There
was also ham and marmalade and bread, so that he had a really very
tolerable breakfast indeed.

Then he took off his overcoat, for the sunshine was now inclined to be
hot, and that reminded him of the rustling he had heard in the night.
He took off the waistcoat and examined it. "Old Butteridge won't like
me unpicking this." He hesitated, and finally proceeded to unpick it. He
found the missing drawings of the lateral rotating planes, on which the
whole stability of the flying machine depended.

An observant angel would have seen Bert sitting for a long time after
this discovery in a state of intense meditation. Then at last he rose
with an air of inspiration, took Mr. Butteridge's ripped, demolished,
and ransacked waistcoat, and hurled it from the balloon whence it
fluttered down slowly and eddyingly until at last it came to rest with
a contented flop upon the face of German tourist sleeping peacefully
beside the Hohenweg near Wildbad. Also this sent the balloon higher,
and so into a position still more convenient for observation by our
imaginary angel who would next have seen Mr. Smallways tear open his own
jacket and waistcoat, remove his collar, open his shirt, thrust his hand
into his bosom, and tear his heart out--or at least, if not his heart,
some large bright scarlet object. If the observer, overcoming a thrill
of celestial horror, had scrutinised this scarlet object more narrowly,
one of Bert's most cherished secrets, one of his essential weaknesses,
would have been laid bare. It was a red-flannel chest-protector, one of
those large quasi-hygienic objects that with pills and medicines take
the place of beneficial relics and images among the Protestant peoples
of Christendom. Always Bert wore this thing; it was his cherished
delusion, based on the advice of a shilling fortune-teller at Margate,
that he was weak in the lungs.

He now proceeded to unbutton his fetish, to attack it with a penknife,
and to thrust the new-found plans between the two layers of imitation
Saxony flannel of which it was made. Then with the help of Mr.
Butteridge's small shaving mirror and his folding canvas basin he
readjusted his costume with the gravity of a man who has taken an
irrevocable step in life, buttoned up his jacket, cast the white sheet
of the Desert Dervish on one side, washed temperately, shaved,
resumed the big cap and the fur overcoat, and, much refreshed by these