“To start an aeroplane.”
“Yet it is certainly a device for flying.”
“I supposed so; but—”
“It is an air-car with a new and valuable idea—the idea for which the whole world has been seeking ever since the first aeroplane found its way up from the earth. My car needs no room to start in save that which it occupies. If it did, it would be but the modification of a hundred others.”
“Orlando!”
As Oswald thus gave expression to his surprise, their two faces were a study: the fire of genius in the one; the light of sympathetic understanding in the other.
“If this car, now within three days of its completion,” Orlando proceeded, “does not rise from the oval of my hangar like a bird from its nest, and after a wide and circling flight descend again into the self same spot without any swerving from its direct course, then have I failed in my endeavour and must take a back seat with the rest. But it will not fail. I’m certain of success, Oswald. All I want just now is a sympathetic helper—you, for instance; someone who will aid me with the final fittings and hold his peace to all eternity if the impossible occurs and the thing proves a failure.”
“Have you such pride as that?”
“Precisely.”
“So much that you cannot face failure?”