"Well, I wish I knew!" retorted his wife. "Some people don't have the slightest sense of responsibility."
"Bah!" said Bentham to himself. Somehow, he felt infinitely superior to his better half, roosting thus safely over her head, and fully protected, not only by the distance separating them but by the fact that the presence of the distinguished scientific gentlemen inside would naturally have a restraining influence upon her tongue. "Bah—snorty old woman!" he repeated, and felt in his pocket for a cigar.
It was at this moment that the crowd suddenly gave expression to its pent-up feelings in a roar of wonder and excitement. For several minutes, twenty-odd thousand people had held their breaths in amazement, as if fearful lest, should one of them speak, that flying squirt of light would stop and fall—the magic spell broken! But now that it was out of sight—vanished into the dark-blue zenith—and had not dropped back, they vented their astonishment and admiration in a mighty yell heard for miles. And then every man turned to his neighbor to assure him that he had believed in Professor Hooker and his Flying Ring right along, and that you could stake your bottom dollar on everything coming out all right. On every hand could be heard such fractional expressions of self-laudation as:
"I tole my wife only las' night—I says—"
"Sure you kin bet on him every time! I allus sed he had Teckla and Thomas A. Edison beat a mile."
"What'd I tell yer, old top? Was I right now, or wasn't I—eh?" etc., etc.
Tassifer, having no companion upon the roof beside him, was compelled to content himself with a sotto-voce reiteration of his earlier remarks of "By Gosh!" "Gee whiz!" and "Hookey!" Well, the little feller had made good!
Bentham began to feel, somehow, as if he had had considerable to do with the expedition—stood, in a sort of way, in loco parentis. He remembered how he had been the first person to sight the Ring on the golf-grounds of Chevy Chase and had protested about its landing there. Also, he was the uncle—by marriage—of Miss Gibbs, who had assisted in the necessary calculations in planning for the flight. He had actually been in the Ring itself and bade its crew good-by only a few moments ago. Why, he was one of the very few! He might even—if he had been willing to be persuaded—have gone along.
Thus, arrogating to himself even more than his usual importance, Tassifer viewed the crowd surging about the car with supreme complacency. They were all making for the road now, as the throng makes for the exits at a big football game, and the field was much less congested than at the moment of the start of the machine. In fact, the chauffeur began to indulge in preparatory noises around the front of the car. There were practically no people left between the motor and the barbed-wire entanglement in which the entrance to the field was located. And yet there was no sign of Rhoda!
He scratched his nose thoughtfully. She couldn't possibly have got out of the enclosure without seeing the car—it would have been a physical impossibility. Then, where had she disappeared? Inside the aerodrome, a half-dozen guards and workmen were piling up the collapsed timbers of the staging. But he couldn't see a skirt anywhere. He wondered if she could have been struck or injured by the falling debris? No; her body would, in that event, be quite visible. He grew more and more puzzled. She was either inside or outside the enclosure, he reasoned closely—and she wasn't inside. She couldn't have got outside without seeing him or being seen.