rd or easy for him to give up the
Moving Fortress. He did it instinctively. There was--unless he had
chosen to be a blackguard--nothing else for him to do.

Besides, the Moving Fortress wasn't his idea. Drayton had had it first.
Anybody might have had it. He hadn't spoken of it first; but that was
nothing. The point was that he had had it first, and Nicky wasn't going
to take it from him.

It meant more to Drayton, who was in the Service, than it could possibly
mean to him. He hadn't even got a profession.

As he walked back through the fields to the station, he said to himself
that he didn't really care. It was only one more jolly sell. He didn't
like giving up his Moving Fortress; but it wouldn't end him. There was
something in him that would go on.

He would make another engine.

He didn't care. There was something in him that would go on.

"I can't see," Desmond had said, "why Captain Drayton should be allowed
to walk off with your idea."

"He's worked five years on it."

"He hasn't worked it _out_ yet, and you have. Can't you see "--her face
was dark and hard with anger--"there's money in it?"

"If there is, all the more reason why I shouldn't bag it."

"And where do I come in?"

"Not just here, I'm afraid. It isn't your business."

"Not my business? When I did the drawings? You couldn't possibly have
done them yourself."

At that point Nicky refused to discuss the matter farther.

And still Desmond brooded on her grievance. And still at intervals
Desmond brought it up again.

"There's stacks of money in your father's business--"

"There's stacks of money in that Moving Fortress--"

"You are a fool, Nicky, to throw it all away."

He never answered her. He said to himself that Desmond was hysterical
and had a morbid fancy.

* * * * *

But it didn't end there.

He had taken the drawings and the box that had the model of the Moving
Fortress in it and buried them in the locker under the big north window
in Desmond's studio.

And there, three weeks later, Desmond found them. And she packed the
model of the Moving Fortress and marked it "Urgent with Care," and sent
it to the War Office with a letter. She packed the drawings in a
portfolio--having signed her own and Nicky's name on the margins--and
sent them to Captain Drayton with a letter. She said she had no doubt
she was doing an immoral thing; but she did it in fairness to Captain
Drayton, for she was sure h