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The war-like moustache of his manservant bristled.
"Hairyplanes," said Orace brilliantly; and Simon smote him on the back.
"You said it, Horatio. With that sizzling brain of yours, you biff the ailnay
on the okobay. Hairy-planes it is. We've got to get to the bottom of this, as
the bishop said to the actress; and it strikes me that if I were to fetch out
the old Gillette and go hairyplaning if I blundered into March House as a
blooming aviator waiting to be pruned - "
The peremptoryzing of the front doorbell interrupted him, and he looked up
with the mischief hardening on his lips. Then he chuckled again.
"I expect this is the deputation. Give them my love, Orace and some of those
exploding cigarettes. I'll be seein' ya!"
He reached the window in a couple of strides and swung himself nimbly
through. Orace watched him disappear into the dell of bracken at the other end
of the lawn and strutted off, glower-ing, to answer the front door.
VI
There is believed to exist a happy band of halfwits whose fondest faith it is
that the life of a government official, the superman to whom they entrust
their national destiny, is one long treadmill of selfless toil from dawn to
dusk. They picture the devoted genius labouring endlessly over reports and
figures, the massive brain steaming, the massive stomach scarcely daring even
to call a halt for food. They picture him returning home at the close of the
long day, his shoulders still bowed beneath the cares of state, to fret and
moil over their problems through the night watches. They are, we began by
explaining, a happy band of half-wits.
The life of a government official is very far from that; particularly if he
is of the species known as "permanent," which means that he is relieved even
of the sordid obligation of being heckled from time to time by audiences of
weary electors. His job is safe. Only death, the Great Harvester, can remove
him; and even when he dies, the event may pass unnoticed until the body begins
to fall apart. Until then, his programme is roughly as follows.
10:30 a.m. Arrive at office in Whitehall. Read newspaper. Discuss night
before with fellow officials. Talk to secretary. Pick up correspondence tray.
Put down again. 11:30 a.m. Go out for refreshment. 12:30 p.m. Return to
office. Practise putting on H. M. carpet.
1:00 p.m. Go out to lunch.
3 :00 p.m. Back from lunch. Pick up correspondence tray. Refer to other
department.
3:30 p.m. Sleep in armchair.
4:00 p.m. Tea.
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4:30 p.m. Adjourn to club. Go home.
As a matter of fact, Sir Hugo Renway was not thinking of his office at all at
half-past nine that morning. He was discussing the ravages of the incorrigible
green fly with his gardener; but he was not really thinking of that, either.
He was a biggish thin-lipped man, with glossily brushed grey hair and a
slight squint. The squint did not make him look sinister: it made him look
smug. He was physically handicapped against looking anyone squarely in the
face; but the impression he managed to convey was, not that he couldn't, but
that he didn't think it worth while. He was looking at the gardener in just
that way while they talked, but his air of well-fed Jmugness was illusory. He
was well-fed, but he was troubled. Under that smooth supercilious exterior,
his nerves were on edge; and the swelling drone of an aeroplane coming up from
the Channel harmonized curiously well with the rasp of his thoughts.
"I don't think none of them new-fangled washes is any good, zir, if you aarsk
me," the man was reiterating in his grumbling brogue; and Renway nodded and
noticed that the steady drone had suddenly broken up into an erratic popping
noise.
The man went on grumbling, and Renway went on pretending to listen, in his
bored way. Inwardly he was cursing cursing the stupidity of a man who was
dead, whose death had transformed the steady drone of his own determination
into the erratic popping which was going through his own, nerves.
The aeroplane swept suddenly over the house. It was rather low, wobbling
indecisively; and his convergent stare hardened on it with an awakening of
professional interest. The popping of the engine had slackened away to
nothing. Then, as if the pilot had seen sanctuary at that moment, the machine
seemed to pull itself together. Its nose dipped, and it rushed downwards in a
long glide, with no other accompaniment of sound than the whining thrum of the
propeller running free. Instinctively Renway ducked; but the plane sideslipped
thirty feet over his head and fishtailed down to a perfect three-point landing
in the flat open field beyond the rose garden.
Renway turned round and watched it come to a standstill. He knew at once that
the helmeted figure in the cockpit had nothing left to learn about the mastery
of an aeroplane. That field was a devil to get into, he had learned from
experience; but the unknown pilot had dumped his ship in it with a dead stick
as neatly as if he had had a whole prairie to choose from. Enrique had been
the same a swarthy daredevil who could land on a playing card and make an
aeroplane do anything short of balancing billiard balls on its tail, whose
nerveless brilliance had been so maddeningly beyond the class of all Renway's
own taut-strung effort. . . . Renway's hands tensed involuntarily at his sides
for a moment while he went on thinking; and then he turned away and began
minutely examining some buds of rose-crimson Papa Gontiers as the pilot walked
under a rustic arch and came towards him.
"I'm terribly sorry," said the aviator, "but I'm afraid I've had a forced
landing in your grounds."
Renway looked at him for a moment. He had a dangerous devil-may-care sort of
mouth, which showed very white teeth when he smiled. Enrique had had a smile
very much like that.
"So I see," said Renway and returned to his study of rosebuds.
His voice was an epitome of all the mincing rudeness which the English lower
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