The meadow wherein they glided to earth in the golden sunset was some distance from a small hamlet which lay down in the valley through which ran a stream glistening in the light, and turning an old-fashioned water-mill on its course. Then, as Ronnie unstrapped himself from his seat and hopped out, he exclaimed:
“Now, dear! You must rest for an hour or two, otherwise I shall not allow you to go up with me after Zepps to-night.”
His smart young mechanic, a fellow named Collins, from the aeroplane works came running up, while Ronnie assisted Beryl out of the machine.
In a corner of the field not far distant was a long barn of corrugated iron, which Ronnie had transformed into a hangar for “The Hornet”—and this they termed “The Hornet’s Nest.” To this they at once wheeled the great machine, Beryl bearing her part in doing so and being assisted by two elderly farm-hands.
Then Collins, the mechanic, having received certain instructions, his master and Beryl crossed the meadow and, passing through a small copse, found themselves upon the lawn of a large, old-fashioned house called Harbury Court. The place, a long, rambling two-storied Georgian one, with a wide porch and square, inartistic windows, was partly covered by ivy, while its front was gay with geraniums and marguerites.
There came forward to meet the pair Beryl’s married sister Iris, whose husband, Charles Remington, a Captain in the Munsters, had been many months at the Front, and was now, alas! a prisoner of war in Germany.
“I heard you arrive,” she said cheerily, addressing the pair. And then she told them how she had waited tea for them. Neither being averse from another cup, the trio passed through the French window into the big, cool drawing-room with its bright chintzes, gay flowers, and interesting bric-a-brac.
While Beryl went half-an-hour later to her room to rest, and Ronnie joined Collins to test various portions of the ’bus and its apparatus before the night flight, a curious scene was taking place in the top room of a block of new red-brick flats somewhere in a northern suburb of London—the exact situation I am not permitted to divulge.
From the window a very extensive view could be obtained over London, both south and east, where glowed the red haze of sunset upon the giant metropolis, with its landmarks of tall factory chimneys, church steeples, and long lines of slate roofs.
The room was a photographic studio. Indeed, the neat brass-plate upon the outer door of the flat bore the name “R. Goring, Photographer,” and as such, its owner was known to other tenants of the various suites, persons of the upper middle-class, men mostly occupying good positions in the City.