d wire ten feet high, and inside that they do things.
Chaps about the camp--now and then we get a peep. It isn't only
us neither. There's the Japanese; you bet they got it too--and the
Germans!"

The soldier stood with his legs very wide apart, and filled his pipe
thoughtfully. Bert sat on the low wall against which his motor-bicycle
was leaning.

"Funny thing fighting'll be," he said.

"Flying's going to break out," said the soldier. "When it DOES come,
when the curtain does go up, I tell you you'll find every one on the
stage--busy.... Such fighting, too!... I suppose you don't read the
papers about this sort of thing?"

"I read 'em a bit," said Bert.

"Well, have you noticed what one might call the remarkable case of
the disappearing inventor--the inventor who turns up in a blaze of
publicity, fires off a few successful experiments, and vanishes?"

"Can't say I 'ave," said Bert.

"Well, I 'ave, anyhow. You get anybody come along who does anything
striking in this line, and, you bet, he vanishes. Just goes off quietly
out of sight. After a bit, you don't hear anything more of 'em at all.
See? They disappear. Gone--no address. First--oh! it's an old story
now--there was those Wright Brothers out in America. They glided--they
glided miles and miles. Finally they glided off stage. Why, it must be
nineteen hundred and four, or five, THEY vanished! Then there was those
people in Ireland--no, I forget their names. Everybody said they could
fly. THEY went. They ain't dead that I've heard tell; but you can't say
they're alive. Not a feather of 'em can you see. Then that chap who flew
round Paris and upset in the Seine. De Booley, was it? I forget. That
was a grand fly, in spite of the accident; but where's he got to? The
accident didn't hurt him. Eh? _'E_'s gone to cover."

The soldier prepared to light his pipe.

"Looks like a secret society got hold of them," said Bert.

"Secret society! NAW!"

The soldier lit his match, and drew. "Secret society," he repeated, with
his pipe between his teeth and the match flaring, in response to his
words. "War Departments; that's more like it." He threw his match aside,
and walked to his machine. "I tell you, sir," he said, "there isn't a
big Power in Europe, OR Asia, OR America, OR Africa, that hasn't got
at least one or two flying machines hidden up its sleeve at the present
time. Not one. Real, workable, flying machines. And the spying! The
spying and manoeuvring to find