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That afternoon the Director was in a conference; I was not able to get in to see him until six o'clock in the evening. He was tidying up his papers to go home, and I don't think he was very glad to see me at that time. "Well, Scott, what is it?" he inquired.

"It's that Reindeer tail," I said. "Rather a disconcerting fact came to light this afternoon."

"What's that?"

"You remember the prototype, the one that flew into the hill in Labrador or somewhere?" He nodded. "Well, it had done 1,393 hours up to the moment of the crash."

"Oh.... Mr. Honey's figure for tail failure was 1,440 hours, wasn't it?"

"That's right, sir." I hesitated. "The figures seem so close I thought you ought to know at once."

"Quite right," he said. "But, Scott, in fact, that machine did come to grief by flying into a hill, didn't it?"

I hesitated again. "Well—that's what we're told, sir, and that's what everybody seems to have accepted. The story as I've heard it is that it hit the top of a mountain and fell down into a forest. Nobody saw it happen, and everyone in it was killed. So there's no direct evidence about what happened to it."

"Marks on the ground, to show where it hit first," he said.

"Oh yes," I said. "I've no doubt that there was that sort of evidence. But if the tail came off at twenty thousand feet it would have to fall somewhere."

"Is that what you think?"

I was silent for a moment. "I don't know," I said at last. "I only know that this figure of 1,393 hours, the time that this machine did till it crashed—that figure's within three per cent of Mr. Honey's estimate of the time to failure of the tail. I can't check that estimate, and Sir Phillip Dolbear won't." I paused in bitter thought, and then I said, "And that three per cent is on the wrong side. It would be."

"It certainly is a coincidence," he said. "Rather a disturbing one." We stood in silence for a minute. "Well," he said, "clearly the best thing is to establish what actually did happen to that aircraft. If it was a tailplane failure, then there must be some evidence of it in the wreckage. I should make a careful check of that upon the basis of Honey's theory. After all, a fatigue fracture is quite easily recognisable."

I nodded. "I was thinking on those lines, sir. I think the first thing is to get hold of the accident report, and talk to the people who prepared it. If you agree I'd like to go to London in the morning and see Ferguson, and go with him to see Group-Captain Fisher in the Accidents Branch."

"Will you take Honey with you?"

"Not unless you want me to particularly," I replied. "He isn't very good in conference, and I'd really rather that he stayed down here and got on with the job of verifying his theory. What I'd like to do would be to see him this evening and tell him that you've authorised the trial upon the Reindeer tail to go ahead by day and night from now on. I really think we ought to run a night shift on it, sir."

"I think we should, Scott. Can you provide the staff?"

"I'll take young Simmons away from Mallory and put him to work with Honey," I said. "Simmons can watch the thing at night for the time being. He can have a camp bed in the office, and an alarm clock. That'll do for a week or so: I'll have Dines to put on it when he comes back from leave."

"All right, Scott. You can tell Honey that I'll see about the night shift in the morning."

I was greatly relieved to have got that settled: at any rate we were now doing all we could upon the technical side. "He'll have plenty to do tomorrow, sir, getting all that cracking. I'd rather he was down here doing that than coming up with me to London."

It was nearly half-past six by the time I left the Director. I went back to my office and rang Honey's office but there was no reply: he had probably gone home. I asked the exchange to give me his home number, and they said he hadn't got one. I packed up my work and went down to the balloon shed on my way out, to see if by any chance he was still there working late. But his office was locked and deserted. Outside, the great span of the tailplane stood upon its testing rig beneath the loading gantries, still and silent. It was not a happy thought that there were Reindeers in the air at that moment, putting up the hours towards the point when Mr. Honey said their tails would break.

It was nearly half-past seven by the time that I got home. Shirley had had dinner waiting for me for half an hour, and she was not too pleased about it. "You might have rung me up," she said.

I told her I was sorry. "I've got to go out afterwards and dig up Honey," I said. "There's a bit of drama on."

"What's the trouble?"

"It's that Reindeer tail," I said.

"The one that Mr. Honey says will come to bits in 1,440 hours?"

I nodded. "Do you remember seeing in the paper that a Reindeer flew into a hill in Labrador a month or so ago? With the Russian Ambassador on board it?"

"I remember the Russians kicking up a stink," she said. "Was that a Reindeer?"

"That was the prototype Reindeer," I replied. "We heard this afternoon that it had done just on fourteen hundred hours when it came to grief."

She had not worked at Boscombe Down all those years for nothing, and she knew quite a bit about aeroplanes. "Oh, Dennis! Do you think it was the tail?"

"I just don't know," I said unhappily. "If it was, I suppose the bloody Russians will say we knew that it was going to happen, and we did it on purpose."

She smiled. "They couldn't say that, surely. Nobody suspected there was anything wrong with the tail when that one crashed."

"Mr. Honey did," I said. There was no end to the trouble that might come out of this thing. But the first thing to do was to make darned sure that it could never happen again.

We had dinner, and washed up; then I went out and got into the car again, and drove round to Mr. Honey's little house in Copse Road. It was about a quarter-past eight when I got there; the door was locked. It was one of those suburban doors with a window in the top part; through this window I could see past the stairs down the narrow hall into the kitchen at the back. I pressed the bell; it rang, but there was no sign of life. Then as I waited there was a stir upstairs and footsteps coming down, and Honey appeared in the hall and opened the door for me.

He said, "Oh, Dr. Scott—I didn't expect to see you. Come in. I was just putting Elspeth to bed."

I went into the hall with him. "I'm sorry to disturb you, Honey," I said. "But something came up about the Reindeer tail this afternoon that I wanted to talk to you about. I've been with the Director this evening, and I've got to go to London in the morning. If you can spare a minute I'd like to have a talk about it now."

He led the way into the front room, which would normally have been the parlour. It was furnished with a long table pushed against the wall, and with an enormous drawing-board in the bay window; on this was pinned a large-scale map of Europe and the Mediterranean Sea, but drawn to some curious projection with which I was not familiar. The other walls were lined with rather dirty unpainted deal cupboards and bookshelves. Books and papers were everywhere, and overflowed in piles upon the floor. I noted some of the titles of the books upon the table—Numerics of the Bible, The Gate of Remembrance, Hysteresis in Non-Ferrous Materials, The Apocrypha in Modern Life, and A Critical Examination of the Pyramid. The room was unswept and rather dirty, with cigarette ends stubbed out on the bare boards of the floor. There were two small upright wooden chairs; he pulled one forward for me.

"I'm afraid it's not very comfortable in here," he said apologetically.

I smiled. "It looks as if you do a bit of work, now and again." I turned to the matter in hand. "What I came about was this. You know that prototype Reindeer, the one that crashed in Labrador? The one that we all thought had flown into a hill?"

He said vaguely, "I think I do remember something about it. It was in the papers, wasn't it?"

"That's right. It crashed and everyone was killed, so no one knows exactly what did happen to it. Well, I checked up on the hours that it had flown before the crash. It had done 1,393 hours."

He stared at me. "Had it? There'd be nothing to say that the crash wasn't due to tailplane failure?"

"That's just the point. I think the tail might possibly have failed. The crash wasn't seen by anyone, of course. It happened in the middle of Labrador."

A slow smile spread over his face. "Well, that's a real bit of luck," he said.

I was staggered. "Luck?"

He beamed at me. "It's just what we wanted—it will shorten down our work enormously." He explained himself. "I mean, if this tail that we're testing now also fails at about 1,400 hours we shall have two trials, one confirming the other. We really shall feel that we're getting somewhere then."

I said weakly, "Well—that's one way of looking at it."

From one of the rooms upstairs Elspeth called out, "Daddy, Dad-dee!" She sounded impatient.

Honey turned to me, and said nervously, "Would you mind excusing me for just a minute? I didn't pull her blind down."

There was no point in playing the high executive, the little tin god; I had nothing else to do that evening. "Not a bit," I said. "Can I come up with you?"

"She'd be very thrilled if you came up to say good night to her," he said. "It would be kind of you."

He took me up into a little bare bedroom at the back of the house; rather to my surprise it was all reasonably clean, though most unfeminine. Elspeth was lying on her back in bed, mathematically in the centre, with the sheet tucked smooth and unruffled across below her chin. Her eyes watched me as I paused in the doorway.

"Hullo," I said. "I've come to say good night." And then I noticed that in bed with her, with its white tasselled head beside her dark one on the pillow, was one of those little cotton mops that you use for washing up.

She saw me looking at it. "Is that your dolly?" I asked, trying to be pleasant.

"No," she said scornfully. "That's a mop."

Honey was busy at the window. I sat down for a moment on the end of her bed. "Is it your best thing?" I asked. "Is that why you've got it in bed with you?"

She nodded vigorously.

"I should use it for washing up," I remarked. "Then you won't have to put your hands in."

She said, "We've got another one for washing up. We went to Woolworth's and Daddy got two, and he said I could have this one to take to bed till we have to use it if the other one wears out. The other one's downstairs in the sink."

Honey had finished at the window. He crossed to the bed, and bent down and kissed his daughter. "Go to sleep now," he said. "Good night."

I said, "Good night, Elspeth. Sleep well."

"Good night, Daddy. Good night, Dr. Scott. Will you say good night to Mrs. Scott for me?"

"I'll tell her. Good night from her."

We went downstairs again to that dirty, littered room with the great drawing-board. "It's all very well to think about the scientific value of that prototype crash," I said, taking up from where we had left off. "But thirty or forty people must have lost their lives in it, and if it was the tail we've got to make darned sure that doesn't happen again, Honey."

"The important thing is to find out if the tailplane really was the cause of that accident," he said. "You see, it may affect the programme for this tail that we are testing now. I've been thinking. A confirmatory experiment is valuable, of course, but it may not be making the best use of the material at our disposal. We might alter the frequency, for example. It's not easy to do that in the middle of a trial, but I'd like to think around it."

"That's for the long-term programme," I said patiently. "What I'm bothered about is—ought we to ground all the Reindeers that are in service now?"

"I suppose that is important, too," he said.

"It's the most important thing of all, Honey, because it's got to be decided now, or very soon, at any rate."

He said thoughtfully, "Of course, we don't really know any more than we did yesterday. We don't know that that tail failed in the air."

"An examination of the wreckage will show that, though, won't it?"

"Oh, yes. If there's a fracture of the main spars of the tail, and if the structure of the metal at the fracture should be crystalline, that would be positive evidence of failure in fatigue."

I stood for a moment deep in thought. Somebody would have to go and have another look at that tailplane; it really ought to be brought back to Farnborough for metallurgical examination. But it was a big unit to transport, and it was urgent that the matter should be settled one way or the other. Where was the wreckage now? In Montreal? Or still in Labrador? I should have to find out that, and find out quick.

"I'm going up to London in the morning to see the Inspector of Accidents," I said at last. "That's why I came in tonight, Honey. I shan't be in the office tomorrow. But I saw the Director this evening and told him about this, and he agreed to running your trial night and day from now on."

"Did he? That's very good news. I only wish he'd done it earlier, though. It's a pity that you have to have an accident to impress on people the urgency of basic research."

I disregarded that one, and went on to tell him about young Simmons and to discuss with him the detailed arrangements that he would have to make next day in my absence. Mr. Honey was quite wide awake and businesslike in any matter that concerned his trial, and having worked for so long in the R.A.E. he knew all the ropes. At the end of ten minutes I was satisfied that everything would go ahead all right in my absence, and I turned to go.

"Well, I'm sorry to have disturbed you, Honey," I said. "I'll be away all day tomorrow, but I'll let you know what happens in London when I come in on Thursday."

"It was good of you to come round," he said. He came with me to the front door, and then he stopped me just as I was going out to the car. "There's just one thing I wanted to ask you, if you could spare a minute ..."

"Of course," I said.

He hesitated. "I wonder if you could tell me where you got that hot-water-heater? Are they very expensive things?"

"Why, no. They're very cheap. I don't know what they cost to buy outright, but you can hire them from the electricity company, you know. We hire ours. I forget what it costs—something quite small. Two bob a quarter, or something like that."

"Really—so little as that? They're very useful, aren't they? I mean, with one of those you've got hot water all the time."

"That's right," I said. "We couldn't do without ours. You can get a big one for the bath, you know."

"Can you!" He paused in thought. "I think I must see about getting one for the kitchen, anyway. It's stupid to go on boiling up kettles to wash up with."

"It makes everything much easier," I said. "You know the electricity office in the High Street? Go in and tell them that you want to hire one. They'll fix you up all right."

"I'll do that," he said. "Thank you for telling me. It does seem to be a thing worth having."

I got into my car and drove home, and put it in the garage at the back of the flats, deep in thought. It seemed long odds to me that the tailplane of the prototype Reindeer would be still lying where it fell, in some Labrador forest. It was most urgent to get hold of it for technical examination; we must have a report on it within a week at the very latest, unless we were prepared to ground the Reindeers upon Mr. Honey's word alone. One thing I was resolved upon, that no Reindeer should go on flying after seven hundred hours unless this thing had been cleared up. But to achieve that end, to stop the whole British Transatlantic air service before another accident happened, I should have to show some better evidence than I had got up to date that Reindeers were unsafe.

Shirley was waiting for me in the flat. "Did Mr. Honey take it seriously?" she asked.

"And how!" I said, sinking down into my chair. "He was as pleased as Punch about it. He thought it was a wonderful thing to have happened." And I told her all about it.

She heard me to the end. "He is a funny little man." And then she said. "Tell me, Dennis—do you really think, yourself, that Honey's right? Are the Reindeer tails dangerous?"

"There's not a shred of evidence that you can hang your hat on that there's anything wrong with them at all," I said evenly. "But—yes, I think he's probably right."

"Why do you think that," she asked quietly, "if there isn't any evidence?"

"Fifteen years in the aircraft industry," I said. "One gets to know the smell of things like this."

I reached for the cigarettes and gave her one, and lit one myself. We sat in silence for a time; I lay back in my chair and watched the blue clouds rising slowly to the ceiling, deep in thought. And presently she asked, "What's Mr. Honey going to do about it?"

I grinned at her. "He's going to hire an electric hot-water-heater," I said. "He's already bought a mop."

I went up to the Ministry in London first thing next morning and saw Ferguson; I told him the whole thing. He was inclined to regard it as a mare's nest, having had some experience of Mr. Honey over the lunch table while he had been at the R.A.E. himself. "I don't want to say anything against a member of your staff, Scott," he remarked. "But there may be things you wouldn't know about, that you really ought to know. Poor old Honey had a lot of trouble at the end of the war, you know—he lost his wife. That changed him a lot—he's never been the same man since. It was very distressing, that."

He paused, and glanced at me. "Did he ever tell you about his experiments with planchette?"

I was not now surprised at anything to do with Mr. Honey. "You mean, spiritualistic stuff?" I asked. "I've heard a lot about him, but I hadn't heard that one."

He hesitated. "I dare say it's all over now. It was probably an effect of the distress he suffered at the time. But he used to do a lot with that."

I was suddenly deeply sorry for the uncouth little man. "Trying to get in touch with her, and all that sort of thing?"

He nodded.

I thought about it for a minute. "I hadn't heard of that," I said at last. "I knew that he was religious, in an eccentric sort of way. But I don't think any of that really concerns us now. What I feel is this—that we can't let this thing slide, even if we both think that Honey's as mad as a hatter. He has made this forecast, for what it's worth, and the prototype did crash about that time. We've got to get to the bottom of it, now."

"Oh yes, of course we have," he replied. "But in the meantime, I shan't lose much sleep myself."

He rang through to Group-Captain Fisher in the Accidents Branch, and we went down to see him. After the preliminary greeting, I said:

"Look, sir—I've come up because we want to know a bit more about that accident to the prototype Reindeer."

He nodded. "You rang me up for the flying time. Just under 1,400 hours, if I remember right."

"That's right, sir. We've been studying fatigue down at Farnborough, and a suggestion has been made that the tailplane might have failed on that machine." I started in and told him the whole thing again, of course omitting the gossip about Mr. Honey. I was getting to know my story off by heart by that time, from having told it to so many people.

As I talked, the frown deepened on his face. I came to the end, and he said, "Do I understand, then, that there is a suggestion that my staff have been completely in error in their analysis of this accident?"

I hesitated. I did not want to get on the wrong side of the Group-Captain at the start. "I wouldn't put it quite like that," I said. "We feel down at our place that this new evidence requires consideration alongside of all the evidence you have gathered up to date."

He glowered at me. "I don't know about new evidence," he said. "If I understood you correctly, you have an estimate from a research worker of what he hopes will happen in a trial which is in progress now. Is that right?"

I said, "That's about it. We have been very much impressed with the way his estimate coincides with the flying time to crash of this first Reindeer."

"Well, I'm not," he said. "There's no magic in the figure 1,400." He rang a bell upon his desk. "In this department, when we speak of evidence, we mean evidence, sworn testimony that can be proved and that would stand up in a court of law. Not supposition and impressions." A girl appeared, and stood in enquiry at the door. "Get me the report upon the Reindeer accident, Miss Donaldson," he said.

We sat in silence while the girl fetched the report; he did not seem to be in a very genial mood, and I did not want to put my foot in it again, so I was saying as little as possible. She brought in a bulky folder bound up in the manner of a final report, and handed it to him, and went away. He turned over the pages of it on his desk in silence for a time.

He said at last, "Well, this is the report. The actual investigation was carried out by Ottawa, of course, with our representative assisting. I suggest you take it away and read it, as a first step. Then if you want any more information, we can have another talk."

"That's very kind of you, sir," I said. "I'll read this through at once, and get in touch with you again."

I went back with Ferguson to his office. When we got there, "What's eating the old boy?" I asked. "I've always found him very helpful in the past."

Ferguson said, "Well, of course—this is a final report." He took it in his hands thoughtfully, considering it. "It's gone to the Minister, and there was a question in the House of Commons—the Minister based his reply on this. Because of the Russians, you know." I nodded. "Naturally, Fisher won't exactly jump for joy if you turn up and prove that it's all wrong."

I said irritably, "But damn it, man—we all make mistakes. I make them, so do you, and so does every living being in the world. One just has to admit them—Fisher's not a child. If this report is based on a misapprehension it'll have to be corrected—we can't hide things up. There's no future in that."

"I know," he said thoughtfully. "The trouble is that Fisher's department has been making rather a lot of mistakes recently." He paused. "You heard about the Zulu crash at Whitney Sutton?"

"I heard the wings came off, or something. I didn't hear why."

"That's right," he said. "It was diving at round about Mach unity, and the wings came off. The ailerons came off first, and then the wing broke up. Fisher's party got it all buttoned up as pilot's error of judgment. But then Cochrane from the Medical Research came in and proved pre-impact head wounds on the pilot's body. The windscreen broke up and crashed into the pilot's face—that's why it dived. It didn't do Fisher any good with the R.A.F. types."

I was interested. "Is that established? Is that what really happened to it?"

He nodded. "Keep it under your hat, old boy. No point in spreading things like that about."

I settled down in Ferguson's armchair to read the report upon the accident to the prototype Reindeer.

It had flown from London Airport on the night of March 27th with a crew of nine and a passenger list of twenty-two persons including the Russian Ambassador to Ottawa, thirty-one people in all. It had been diverted from Gander on account of fog and had landed at Goose at about 7 a.m. G.M.T. on the morning of the 28th. It had refuelled there, and had taken off for Montreal at 9.17 in weather that was overcast and raining: the temperature was above freezing, unusual for the time of year. The crew had not reported any trouble at Goose. One wireless message of a routine character was received at 9.46 reporting that the aircraft was on course at 16,500 feet. That was the last that was heard of it.

It was three days before it was reported by one of the search aircraft, though the spot where it was finally located had been flown over several times. It was another two days before a party succeeded in getting to the wreckage. They flew up in a Norseman fitted with skis and landed in deep snow on a frozen lake called Small Pine Water: the landing was a hazardous one because of the alternate thaw and freeze: the skis mushed in beneath the icy crust. The party then had to force their way eleven miles over the snow-covered hills, thickly covered with a forest of spruce and alder. The night temperatures were as low as -45° Fahrenheit, making it a most difficult search: several of the party suffered from frostbite. In the deep snow and the forest growth they would never have found the crash at all but for the continuous guidance given by the aircraft working with them.

In the circumstances, it is hardly surprising that their investigation was, in some respects, perfunctory.

The spot where the Reindeer crashed was about 250 miles from Goose, about 50 miles west of the Moisie river and about 100 miles north of the sea coast in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. It was just in Canada, in the Province of Quebec.

The bulk of the aircraft was found lying in deep snow among trees at the foot of a cliff, the estimated height of which was 340 feet. It had been on fire after the crash, and everything in it was totally destroyed. All the bodies were found within the flattened shell of the fuselage, indicating that nobody had survived the accident. The cliff face at that point ran approximately east and west along the aircraft's course, and the Reindeer had hit first at the top of this cliff, very near the edge. It had knocked down three trees, and here the starboard wing had been torn off; the wing was found at some distance from the rest of the machine, at the foot of the cliff. Two propeller blades and portions of the engine cowling were found on top of the cliff. The fuselage had then toppled over the cliff and had crashed down into the forest below, and burnt out.

From the damage to the trees it seemed that the original impact, the first touch, had been with the machine at a small angle of descent, probably not more than ten degrees below the horizontal. From that the investigators had deduced that the machine was under control up to the moment of impact, and from that, that the pilot had been deliberately losing height through the overcast in order to check his position by a sight of the ground.

Ferguson, reading all this over my shoulder, said doubtfully, "Well, that could be. But it sounds a bit odd to me. He was only an hour out from Goose. What should he want to check his position for?"

I shrugged my shoulders, and turned to the photographs bound up with the report. The photographers were technicians, not sensation-mongers, and they had not gone out of their way to photograph the horrors; but it was not a pretty scene. The wreckage, of course, was hardly recognisable as an aircraft at all; in modern accidents it never is. It looked like the scrap heap of a tin factory. I turned the pages one by one, examining each photograph in turn minutely.

"I don't see the port tailplane anywhere," I said at last.

"If it's missing, it'll be referred to somewhere in the text," said Ferguson. "Let me have a look."

He turned the pages till we found what we were looking for. The passage read:

The party remained on the site of the accident for three days, during which time the 31 bodies were buried in individual graves. The whole of the units of the aircraft were not accounted for, due to the dense nature of the forest at this point. It was impossible to see further than three yards in any one direction because of the thickness of the undergrowth laden with snow, and no progress was possible except along paths cut for that purpose. The daytime thaw made all work wet and difficult and greatly hampered the search. The units of the aircraft unaccounted for were the starboard aileron, the outer starboard engine No. 6, the port tailplane and elevator, the port landing wheel assembly, No. 3 propeller (parted from the engine by a fracture of the crankshaft), and about five feet of the tip of the starboard wing.

I glanced at Ferguson. "Port tailplane and elevator," I said. "There we are."

He nodded. "It's not evidence, of course," he said. "It keeps the fatigue theory in the field, in that if the tailplane had been there and intact it couldn't have come off in the air. But the mere fact that the port tailplane was missing, when so much else was missing, doesn't take us very far."

"It's beginning to tot up," I said. "It's one more thing."

I settled down to read the report through carefully; when I got to the end I turned back to the beginning and read it through again, making notes as I did so. It was clear from the circumstances of the accident that the wreckage could not possibly have been removed. It would still be lying where it fell three months before, with the new growth of the forest coming up around it and through it, gradually obliterating everything. There was my evidence, all right, there in the woods. In one of the photographs I could see the broken stump of the front spar of the port tailplane. It would not be necessary, perhaps, to search the woods for the tailplane itself. If that broken spar attached to the rear fuselage showed the typical form of fatigue crystallisation of the metal at the fracture, there would be all the evidence we needed. It would, of course, be better and would make the matter more complete if we could get the tailplane, too.

In the middle of the afternoon I went down to see the Group-Captain again, ready to be firm.

"I've read through this report," I said. "It's very interesting, sir—and, if I may say so, the most comprehensive report I've yet seen on an accident. It's very thorough."

He smiled. "Got all you want from it?"

"I think so," I said. "I should like to take it down to Farnborough to talk it over with the Director, if you could spare this copy for a few days?"

"That's all right," he said.

I went on, "Well, sir—about this suggestion that's been made about tailplane fatigue. You'll hear from us officially in the next day or two, if we want anything done. My present feeling—what I shall advise the Director—is that we should send an officer out there at once to make an examination of this broken tailplane spar." His face darkened; I opened the report and showed him the photograph. "This one. As the port tail was missing altogether we can't rule out this theory that has arisen. Of course, if it should be proved that fatigue is present in these aircraft at such an early stage, it's a matter of the greatest urgency to put it right."

I stared down at the photograph before us; it was horrible. "We don't want another one like this," I said.

Fisher said stiffly, "If you really think that necessary after the very careful investigation that has been already made, I suppose Ottawa can arrange it. If it comes at our request, of course, financial sanction will be necessary; these expeditions to out-of-the-way places like this are very costly, you know. It's in a dollar area, too, so the Secretariat will have to submit the matter to the Treasury. But if you people insist upon it, I suppose it can all be arranged."

"I can only state my own view, sir," I said. "I think it's necessary, and a matter of great urgency. That's what I shall tell the Director; I can't say, of course, what he'll decide. But I should like to see an officer on his way to Ottawa tomorrow, or the day after, at the latest."

"It all seems rather ridiculous," he grumbled. "The matter was most carefully gone into."

I did not want to argue it with him, and I had given him warning of what was coming, as was only fair. I said good-bye and left the office with Ferguson. He was rather amused; in the corridor outside the office he turned to me, and grinned. "He's putting up a good fight," he said. "He knows all the tricks. He'll run round to the Secretariat tonight and tell them that your journey isn't really necessary."

"He wouldn't do a thing like that," I said. I was a little worried at the mere suggestion. "He's a good old stick—I've known him for years. And this thing concerns the lives of people in the air. He wouldn't want to see another stinking crash like this."

"Of course he wouldn't," Ferguson replied. "But you see—he thinks you're absolutely wrong, and just kicking up a stink in his department irresponsibly. People believe what they want to believe."

I got back to Farnborough too late to see the Director. I went home with the report under my arm, tired and depressed by what had been my reading for the day. I was due to read my paper on the PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF AIRCRAFT FLYING AT HIGH MACH NUMBERS on the following Thursday, the first paper that I had been asked to read before a learned society. When I got home I found that the advance printed copy of this thing had arrived, and that Shirley had been reading it all afternoon. She had taken it upstairs to show to Mrs. Peters in the flat above; it was a great thing for us, because it was the first distinction we had managed to collect since we were married. Fingering it and turning over the pages, and discussing with Shirley the cuts that I would make when reading it, served as an anodyne; it took my mind off the Reindeer misery, so that I slept fairly well.

I went down to see the Director first thing next morning. I showed him the Reindeer accident report, and told him all about my interviews with Group-Captain Fisher. "In spite of what he says, I think we ought to send somebody out there," I remarked. "I should like to see an officer from here sent out by air straight away, sir, to make a metallurgical report on that spar fracture."

"I think you're right, Scott," he said slowly. "I believe that's the only thing to do. Who would you send?"

"I should send Honey."

"You have sufficient confidence in Honey, Scott?"

I said, "I have, sir. I'm beginning to get quite a respect for Mr. Honey. I'm beginning to think he's right in this thing, and he's certainly the man in the Establishment who knows most about fatigue."

"Yes, he is that." He turned over the pages of the report, thoughtfully. "This place where the accident is located—I understand it's eleven miles from a lake where you can land a seaplane? That's a journey of eleven miles through the Canadian woods?"

"I think so."

"I'm not so sure that Honey is the right man for that sort of assignment, Scott. He isn't what I should describe as an outdoor type." He paused. "You wouldn't rather go yourself?"

I hesitated in my turn. I would have given my eyes to go off on a trip like that, and it would have been a very welcome change from my office routine. But whoever went would have to go at once. "I'd go like a shot, sir," I said. "But I've got this paper to read on Thursday of next week, the one on the performance of high Mach numbers. Of course, I could cancel it."

He said, "I had forgotten that." He shook his head. "You'll have to stay for that—after all, the Royal Aeronautical Society is an important body; you can't treat them like that. No, it will have to be Honey. You really think he will get on all right upon a trip like this?"

"I'm sure he will, sir," I replied. "Technically, he's certainly the best man we've got to send. And as regards the physical aspects of the journey, we can warn Ottawa that we're sending over somebody who isn't very fit. They'll make things easy for him, and push him through all right."

We stood in silence for a minute; evidently he didn't like it much. "I only wish he had a better presence," the Director said at last. And then he straightened up. "All right, Scott, I'll tell Ferguson what we've decided, and I'll get on to the Secretariat about the air passage. You'd like him to fly out at once?"

"Immediately, sir. I don't think we can afford to waste a day."

I went up to my office and sent for Mr. Honey. He came in blinking through his thick spectacles; his hair was untidy, his collar was dirty, and there was a smear of what I judged to be egg upon the front of his waistcoat. He looked even more of a mess than usual. It was certainly a problem how to clean him up without hurting his feelings and making him bloody-minded, to make him look a little more presentable before I pushed him off to Ottawa.

I told him what had happened in London, and I showed him the report of the accident. He did not seem to be very interested in the factual circumstances of the crash, but he seized on the photographs and looked for a long time at the stump of the tailplane front spar. "It has all the appearance of a fatigue fracture," he said at last. "Look. There's no crumpling or elongation of the metal there. There's practically no distortion of the flange at all, right up to the point of fracture. That's not natural. That's a short fracture, that's what that is. The metal must have been terribly crystalline to break off short like that."

I could see what he meant, though the detail was very tiny in the photograph. It was one more thing.

I told him that we had decided that an officer should fly to Ottawa at once, and that we were arranging for a seaplane or amphibian take a party up to Small Pine Water immediately for a further technical examination of the wreckage. "I want you to go and do that, Honey," I said. "I don't know anybody who could do it better."

He stared at me. "You mean—that I should go to Canada?"

"That's right," I said. "I want you to go at once, starting the day after tomorrow. It really is most urgent that we should get this matter settled up and find out if that tailplane failed in fatigue or not."

"I don't know that there's all that rush about it," he said. "I agree—it's information that we must have ultimately, and the sooner we get it the better, I suppose. But we've still got to go on with the trial here, and I can't possibly get out even a preliminary report for limited circulation till November."

"I know," I said patiently. "But that's the other aspect of it, Honey—the long-term research. What I'm concerned about now is—have we got to ground the Reindeers that are flying now?"

He said irritably, "Oh, the ad hoc trial. Surely, anybody can do that, and leave me free to get on with the stuff that really matters."

"This is the most important thing of all at the moment, Honey," I said firmly. "Look. You're an older man than I am, and probably a better scientist. Perhaps I'm better as an administrator than you would be—I don't know. In any case, here I am sitting in this office, and it's part of my job to decide the priorities of work in this department. I think this trip to Canada is top priority of anything that's going on at Farnborough today and I want you to drop everything else and go and do it, because I can't think of anybody who could do it better. It's not an order, because we don't work that way. But I hope you'll accept my decision about priorities, because that's what I'm here for."

He smiled, a shy, warm smile that I had never seen before. "Of course," he said. "I wasn't trying to be difficult. I only hope I shan't have to spend too long away from here."

I thought about that for a moment. "I know it's important to get you back as soon as ever we can," I said. "I don't want to see the basic work held up. I'll see that you get an air passage home immediately the job is done. I should think you'd probably be away from here for ten days or a fortnight."

His face fell. "So long as that?"

"I don't believe you'd do it in much less. First, you've got to get from here to Ottawa. Then there's the flight back from Ottawa to north-east Quebec, and then to reach the site of the accident is a day's trek on foot. And then the whole thing in reverse again, to get back home."

"It's an awful waste of time," he grumbled.

"It's not," I said. "That's my sphere of decisions, Honey, and I tell you that it's not a waste of time."

"It is from the point of view of the basic research."

"So is eating your breakfast," I remarked. "But you've got to do that, too."

I went through the various arrangements that would have to be made for carrying on his trials in his absence; he was quite businesslike and alert where anything to do with basic trials was concerned, and in ten minutes we were through with that. "Now about your trip," I said. "It's going to mean some days of living rough in the Canadian woods, I'm afraid. You'll be with the R.C.A.F. and they'll look after you, but I understand that there's a ten or fifteen mile walk from the lake you land on to the site of the crash, and the same back again. It'll probably be quite difficult going. Have you got an outfit of clothes that would do for that, Honey?"

"I've got some good strong boots. I haven't looked at them for years, but I think they're all right." He paused, and then he said, "We used to do a lot of hiking on Sundays, when my wife was alive ..." He stared out of the window, and was silent for a moment; I did not care to interrupt him. "We used to go in shorts ... I've got those somewhere, I think. Do you think shorts would be suitable?"

The thought of Mr. Honey turning up in Ottawa in short hiking pants as a representative of the Royal Aircraft Establishment made me blench. "I wouldn't take those," I said. "I don't believe they wear shorts in the woods, on account of the mosquitoes. I'll get a letter through to Ottawa asking them to kit you up for the trip, and we can charge it up as necessary expenses. I should take the boots with you, or ... no, they'll supply those too. But look, Honey, go in your best suit. You're going as the representative of this Establishment. Put on a bit of dog, you know. Don't let anybody sit on you in any technical matter; you're the expert, and you're the man that counts. We'll back you up from here in anything you feel you've got to insist on."

He nodded. "I'll remember that," he said.

"Now, how about your personal affairs? Are you all right with those?"

He hesitated. "Well, no, I'm not. I've got a man from the Electricity Company coming in one day next week to fit up that electric hot-water-heater. And then there's Elspeth—I shall have to see if I can get somebody to come and sleep in the house, I suppose. It's rather a long time for her to be alone."

I was a bit staggered at the suggestion that he could leave Elspeth alone at all. "What about her?" I asked. "Have you got a relative who could come and stay with her?"

He shook his head. "I don't think there's anybody like that." He paused for a minute in thought, and then he said, "Don't worry about that, Dr. Scott—I'll think of something. I've left her for two days at a time, once or twice, when I had to. Of course, she's older now, but I think this is much too long to do that. I think I can get Mrs. Higgs—that's my charwoman—I think she'd come and sleep in while I'm away."

The thought was distasteful to me, but it was at any rate a possible solution to his problem. If we had had a second bedroom at the flat I would have offered to put up his child myself, but we hadn't. Moreover, Honey's domestic affairs were really no concern of mine, and there was a limit to the extent that I could allow them to influence me in the work of the Establishment. But I was sorry for Elspeth.

"I'll see that you get back as soon as ever we can manage it," I said.

"That's very good of you—I really don't want to be away longer than is necessary, for a variety of reasons." His eyes dropped to the accident report on the desk before us. "Have you told the Rutland Company anything about this yet?"

I had forgotten all about the design staff who had produced the Reindeer, or if I had remembered them I had placed them in the background of my mind. "I haven't told them anything about it yet," I said slowly. "I thought perhaps it was better to wait until the matter was rather more definite. Do you think we ought to get in touch with Prendergast now?"

"I don't want to," he said quickly. "I was wondering if you had."

"No, I hadn't done anything about it." The apprehension of a new series of difficulties swept over me. E. P. Prendergast was the Chief Designer of the Rutland Aircraft Company, and the author of the Reindeer. In person, he was a big, dark man with bushy black eyebrows and the face of an ascetic monk. He was about six foot four in height and broad in proportion to his height; he was nearly sixty years old, but he was still a very powerful man. He was one of the oldest and most successful chief designers in the country, and the Reindeer was the last of a long line of lovely aircraft that had come out of his office. He was a very great artist at the business of designing aeroplanes, and like all great designers in the aircraft industry, he was a perfect swine to deal with.

There is, of course, a good explanation in psychology for this universal characteristic of the greatest aeroplane designers. A beautiful aircraft is the expression of the genius of a great engineer who is also a great artist. It is impossible for that man to carry out the whole of the design himself; he works through a design office staffed by a hundred draughtsmen, or more. A hundred minds, each with their own less competent ideas, are striving to modify the chief designer's original conception. If the design is to appear in the end as a great artistic unity, the chief designer must be a man of immensely powerful will, capable of imposing his idea and his way of doing things on each of his hundred draughtsmen, so that each one of them is too terrified to insert any of his own ideas. If the chief designer has not got this personality and strength of will, his original conception will be distorted in the design office and will appear as just another, not-so-good aeroplane. He will not then be ranked as a good chief designer.

All really first-class chief designers, for this reason, are both artists, engineers, and men of a powerful and an intolerant temper, quick to resist the least modification of their plans, energetic in fighting the least infringement upon what they regard as their own sphere of action. If they were not so, they could not produce good aeroplanes. For the Government official who detects an error in their work the path is not made easy, and of all men in the aircraft industry the most dangerous to cross was E. P. Prendergast. He was deeply religious in a narrow, Calvinistic way. He could be in turn a most courteous and charming host, a sympathetic and an understanding employer, and a hot-tempered fiend capable of making himself physically sick with his own passion, so that he would stalk out of a conference of bitter, angry words, and retire to the toilet and vomit, and go home to bed, and return to his office three days later, white and shaken with the violence of his illness. He was about the greatest engineer in England at that time and he produced the most lovely and successful aeroplanes. But he was not an easy man to deal with, E. P. Prendergast.

The Director sent for me again that evening. He had had Ferguson working all day on the matter; cables had been passing to and fro with Ottawa, and the Treasury had been persuaded that it was necessary to spend the dollars. Priority had been allocated for the passage, and it looked as if Mr. Honey would get off on Sunday.

After all that, I raised the matter of the Rutland Aircraft Company. I said, "At what stage do you think we ought to get the firm in on this thing, sir?" I paused, and then I added, "E. P. Prendergast ..."

He glanced at me. "Yes ... Prendergast." He was silent for a minute, and I knew what he was thinking. If anybody dared to say the Reindeer tail was not above suspicion and could not produce good evidence for that assertion, E. P. Prendergast would go up in a sheet of flame. He would complain to the Minister, as he had done before, that he could not carry on his work in an atmosphere of petty back-biting and vilification by minor civil servants. He would offer, in the most dignified way, to give up his post and go to America if it would assist the Minister in his direction of the Industry. But if it was the desire of the Minister that he should continue to design British aircraft, then he must be protected from the expression of the petty jealousies of petty Government officials. As I have said, we had had some of this before.

The Director said, "I doubt if Mr. Prendergast would find Honey's theoretical work very convincing."

"I'm damn sure he wouldn't," I said. "He'd chew him up and spit him out in no time."

"I don't know that the time is quite ripe to inform the firm," he said thoughtfully. "After all, there's nothing they can do till it is proved that fatigue is actually taking place. We ought to have a cable from Honey in a few days which will indicate what really happened to that prototype machine. I think that would be the time when we should get the firm into the matter, when the question of some modification arises."

"I think so, too," I said. "I think it's a bit early yet to worry them."

I told Honey to make preparations for his passage on Sunday, and I put him into touch with Ferguson, who knew him well, over the matter of his passport and his money. Then I went home, and that evening over supper I told Shirley all about it. "He's going to get the charwoman to come and sleep in the house with Elspeth," I said.

"Oh, Dennis—the poor child! Is that the best he can do?"

"I asked him if he hadn't got a relation who could come in," I said defensively. "He said he hadn't got one."

She was indignant. "But do you mean to say she's going to be all alone for a fortnight, except for the charwoman? Dennis, you can't let him go away like that! He must make some better arrangement for her."

"I can't help it if he goes away and leaves her like that," I said irritably. "I can't run his life for him. I'm his boss; I'm not a ruddy welfare worker."

"I know." She was silent for a minute, and then she said, "Perhaps after he's gone we could go round there and see how she's getting on."

"I think we ought to do that," I agreed. "It's a rotten way to leave a child, but there doesn't seem to be much else that he can do. And he's the only man to go to Canada."