"Might have wanted to shoot himself," Monty replied.
I pondered deeply, my eyes on the passing façade of the Ritz. Certainly Monty, as the first on the scene that morning that now seemed such ages ago, had the right to collate his original observations with anything he might subsequently have learned, and the resulting conclusion would probably be a strong one. But that Chummy had possibly wished to shoot himself was no explanation of why he had shot Maxwell. Indeed, another explanation was far more probable. Having realized that he had in fact shot him he might merely have wished to take the shortest way out himself, and I drew Monty's attention to this.
"I'm coming to that," Monty answered. "You see this fellow Wetherhead is a jolly interesting chap. You remember the July push on the Somme? Well, he was in that—Bristol Fighter—and then he went up the line to Wipers. He told me that one time when they were in Pop—Poperinghe that is, you know, and we'd a lot of heavy guns there———" (but I think I may safely omit the rather lengthy second-hand recital of Wetherhead's movements and experiences). "Extraordinary yarns he has to tell. Did you know that a first-class pilot can drive another one down with the wash of his propeller? He can, Wetherhead says. He gets above him, and maneuvers for position, and then—I forget exactly how Wetherhead put it, but he showed me with a couple of models they have there——"
"Yes, yes, but you were going to say——"
"So I was; I know I'm rambling a bit, but it's awfully interesting, and you must meet Wetherhead. Well, when he was with the infantry (Northwold Fusiliers) he says quite a number of their fellows used to carry little doses of poison about with them, just in case. He'd heard awful yarns of the way some of these Boches used to treat their prisoners. So they had this poison to be ready for anything, like Whitaker Wright with his cigar."
"Monty, if you don't come to the point——"
"Why, I'm there now; don't have a vertical gust, old thing. Well, just in the same way Wetherhead says some of these pilots and their observers had an arrangement that if one of them got it in the neck the other one was to finish the job for him. And the other way round, of course. He and his observer—he's going to introduce me to him—they had it all fixed up, but luckily it never came to that. So it's not impossible that these two fellows were like that. What do you think? It fits in with my end all right, and you've been down there and seen Smith. What about you? I'm inclined to have a bit on it myself."
A bit on it! ... A bit! Instantly I would have had all I possessed on it. Our bus was standing at the Circus end of Lower Regent Street when Monty at last came out with it, but it had reached Waterloo Place before I next became conscious of my physical surroundings. A bit on it!... Look at Monty as I have tried to describe him to you. An unworldly and lovable and gentle sort of donkey he was in some ways; now that he had finished with his dummy trees and linoleum infantry he was apparently beginning to learn a little about other aspects of the war; and Wetherhead (whoever he was—already Monty had so crammed him down my throat that I was resolved to put the width of England between us rather than meet him) suddenly stood for the whole of the Air Force to him. But behind all his sweet credulity Monty was no fool. He was aware of his ground. He had been the first on the roof that morning. He was in the last event capable of putting two and two together and of scoring a bull. Do you know these flashes of the absolute and unalterable rightness of a thing? One of them blinded Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus; something of the same kind blinded me for the whole length of Lower Regent Street. I had no longer one single shadow of doubt. Nay, I had a certitude that even Monty didn't share. He "wasn't perfectly sure." But I——!
For what else could it have been? What else in the whole realm of man's created spirit? For what other reason could Esdaile, up to then wavering and swayed by doubts, have visited the hospital where Smith lay, have been back in his own home again within half an hour, and then have straightway borne his exonerated friend off into the midst of his family? Why, from that moment, had he immediately set about to get his own half-confidences to the rest of us back into his possession again? Why, at Santon, had my own questions been met with a silencing stare? Of all the things conceivable to have been told, could Smith have told him anything but this?
And Smith's own demeanor on that uplifted Yorkshire headland? Was not that too explained? I thought it was, and could only marvel—marvel—that not as much as the smell of the fire had passed upon him. That white and welding heat of war had not merely made his pact with Maxwell a thing to be honored in the last emergency without a further moment's thought, but it admitted no sigh nor compunction nor regret afterwards. Compunction? Sigh? Regret? For what? It had had to be done, and it had been done. As gladly would he have accompanied his friend's spirit on that last flight of all, but, that denied him, unsorrowing he remained behind, ground-officer henceforward to an angel. What more than this is death to those who for four years have been crucified all the day long? What else is life, their own life or that other-own their friend's, when it is held at this instant readiness? The coil about it all is not for them, but for us, who peer about for bullets and cartridge-cases and holes in the floor. Chummy's every breath would not have been his absolution had he not laughed with Esdaile's children and, with Joan perched on the carrier behind him, cheerfully fouled the Santon roads with the stench of his exhaust. He had no burden to assume. He had, on the contrary, an urgent task to carry on. And in the carrying-on of it he knitted his uncomprehending brows over Maxwell's Transactions and Proceedings and carried a dead man's portrait on his wrist.