ce, "the steering wheel is jammed!"

It was true. The steering wheel had been carefully fastened in one
position, and the lever controlling the planes had also been fixed so as
to hold them at the right angle for a downward glide. That was strange
enough, but in face of the mystery of Radcliffe's disappearance little
attention was paid it.

Where, then, was its pilot? That was the question that was filling
everybody's mind. He had vanished as utterly as vanishes the mist one
sees rising in the sunshine.

It was supposed he must have fallen from his seat, but as to how that
had happened, how it was that no fragment of his body or his clothing
was ever found, above all, how it was that his aeroplane had returned,
the engine cut off, the planes secured in correct position, no even
moderately plausible explanation was ever put forward.

The loss to aeronautics was felt to be severe. From childhood Radcliffe
had shown that, in addition to this, he had a marked aptitude for
drawing, usually held at the service of his profession, but now and
again exercised in producing sketches of his friends.

Among those who knew him privately he was fairly popular, though not,
perhaps, so much so as he deserved; certainly he had a way of talking
"shop" which was a trifle tiring to those who did not figure the world
as one vast engineering problem, while with women he was apt to be
brusque and short-mannered.

My surprise, then, can be imagined when, calling one afternoon on him
and having to wait a little, I had noticed lying on his desk a crayon
sketch of a woman's face. It was a very lovely face, the features almost
perfect, and yet there was about it something unearthly and spectral
that was curiously disturbing.

"Smitten at last?" I asked jestingly, and yet aware of a certain odd
discomfort.

When, he saw what I was looking at he went very pale.

"Who is it?" I asked.

"Oh, just--someone!" he answered.

He took the sketch from me, looked at it, frowned and locked it away. As
he seemed unwilling to pursue the subject, I went on to talk of the
business I had come about, and I congratulated him on his flight of the
day before in which he had broken the record for height. As I was going
he said:

"By the way, that sketch--what did you think of it?"

"Why, that you had better be careful," I answered, laughing; "or you'll
be falling from your high estate of bachelordom."

He gave so violent a start, his face expressed so m