As you know, no such thing as a definite lead existed. Except for war purposes, the future use of flying was at that time the blankest of blanks. It is true we talked a good deal about it, but that was merely our highly specialized way of saying nothing and filling space at the same time. Nobody admitted this lack more readily than those who had drawn up the provisional Regulations. These were merely experimental, any accident might change them at any moment, and, in one word, all our experience was still to be earned.
For this reason, I was just as much interested in opinion about the facts as I was in the facts themselves, and already I was looking forward to an exchange of views with Hubbard and Mackwith.
But time had flown. Both Hubbard and Mackwith had appointments for which they were already late, the one at the Admiralty, the other in the Temple. I therefore parted from them at Sloane Square Station, and, being in no great hurry myself, turned back along King's Road. What I was in search of was a representative public-house. We have all heard of "the man in the street." You often get even closer to the heart of things when you listen to the man in the pub.
I think it was the sight of a plumpish young man in a horsey brown coat that settled my choice of pub. For a moment I couldn't remember where I had seen that or a similar coat before; then it flashed upon me. A man in just such a coat had preceded that ladder that had been passed over the heads of the crowd in Lennox Street, and he or somebody very like him had managed to get inside Esdaile's gate and to secure a privileged position within a few feet of the mulberry tree in which the parachute had lodged.
I followed this coat through two glittering swing-doors a little way round the corner from the King's Road, and found myself in a closely-packed Saloon Bar full of tobacco-smoke and noise.
II
I will venture to say that the man I followed was never shut out of a tube-lift in his life, however crowded it was. He jostled through the throng about the counter as if it had been so much water. I learned presently that he had had no sort of interest or proprietorship whatever in that ladder that had been passed along Lennox Street. Seeing a ladder approaching he had merely pushed himself forward, had placed himself at the head of it, and, with energetic elbowings and loud cries of "Make way there!" had made it to all intents and purposes his own, squeezing himself in at Esdaile's gate with such nice judgment that the very next man had been shut out. He called this "managing it a treat," and I further gathered that neat things like this usually did happen when Harry Westbury was anywhere about.