That was a little after two o’clock; Shumann and the jumper had been in the Superintendent’s office from twelve until fifteen to one. They had passed through the same discreet door which Jiggs had used the afternoon before and had gone on through the ante-room and into a place like a board-room in a bank — a long table with a row of comfortable chairs behind it, in which sat perhaps a dozen men who might have been found about any such table back in town, and another group of chairs made out of steel and painted to resemble wood, in which with a curious gravity something like that of the older and better behaved boys in a reform school on Christmas Eve, sat the other men who ordinarily at this hour would have been working over the aeroplanes in the hangar — the pilots and parachute jumpers, in greasy dungarees or leather jackets almost as foul — the quiet sober faces looking back as Shumann and the jumper entered.
Just as the blue serge of last night was absent, so were the tweed coats and ribbon badges, with one exception. This was the microphone’s personified voice. He sat with neither group, his chair which should have been at the end of the table drawn several feet away as though he were preparing to tip it back against the wall.
But he was as grave as either group; the scene was exactly that of the conventional conference between the mill owners and the delegation from the shops, the announcer representing the labour lawyer — that man who was once a labourer himself but from whose hands the calluses have now softened and whitened away so that, save for something nameless and ineradicable about his clothing — a quality incorrigibly dissenting and perhaps even bizarre — which distinguishes him for ever from the men behind the table as well as from the men before it, as the badge of the labour organization in his lapel establishes him for ever as one of them, he might actually sit behind the table too.
But he did not. But the very slightness of the distance between him and the table established a gap more unbridgable even than that between the table and the second group, as if he had been stopped in the midst of a violent movement, if not of protest at least of dissent, by the entrance into the room of the men in whose absent names he dissented. He nodded to Shumann and the jumper as they found chairs, then he turned to the thick-faced man at the centre of the table.
“They’re all here now,” he said. The men behind the table murmured to one another.
“We must wait for him,” the thick-faced man said. He raised his voice. “We are waiting for Colonel Feinman, men,” he said. He took a watch from his vest; three or four others looked at their watches. “He instructed us to have everyone present at twelve o’clock. He has been delayed. You can smoke, if you like.”
Some of the second group began to smoke, passing lighted matches, speaking quietly like a school class which has been told that it can talk for a moment:
“What is it?”
“I don’t know. Maybe something about Burnham.”
“Oh, yair. Probably that’s it.”
“Hell, they don’t need all of us to—”
“Say, what do you suppose happened?”
“Blinded, probably.”
“Yair. Blinded.”
“Yair. Probably couldn’t read his altimeter at all. Or maybe forgot to watch it. Flew it right into the ground.”
“Yair. Jesus, I remember one time I was—” They smoked.
Sometimes they held the cigarettes like dynamite caps so as not to spill the ash, looking quietly about the clean new floor; sometimes they spilled the ashes discreetly down their legs. But finally the stubs were too short to hold. One of them rose; the whole room watched him cross to the table and take up an ash-tray made to resemble a radial engine and bring it back and start it passing along the three rows of chairs like a church collection plate.
Shumann looked at his watch and it was twenty-five minutes past twelve. He spoke quietly to the announcer, as though they were alone in the room:
“Listen, Hank. I’ve got all my valves out. I have got to put the micrometer on them before!”
“Yair,” the announcer said. He turned to the table. “Listen,” he said. “They are all here now. And they have got to get the ships ready for the race at three; Mr. Shumann there has got all his valves out.
So can’t you tell them without waiting for F — Colonel Feinman? They will agree, all right. I told you that. There ain’t anything else they can — I mean they will agree.”
“Agree to what?” the man beside Shumann said. But the chairman, the thick-faced man, was already speaking.
“Colonel Feinman said—”
“Yair.” The announcer spoke patiently. “But these boys have got to get their ships ready. We’ve got to be ready to give these people that are buying the tickets out there something to look at.” The men behind the table murmured again, the others watching them quietly.
“Of course we can take a straw vote now,” the chairman said. Now he looked at them and cleared his throat. “Gentlemen, the committee representing the business men of New Valois who have sponsored this meet and offered you the opportunity to win these cash prizes—” The announcer turned to him.
“Wait,” he said. “Let me tell them.” He turned now to the grave almost identical faces of the men in the hard chairs; he spoke quietly too. “It’s about the programmes. The printed ones — you know. With the setup for each day. They were all printed last week and so they have still got Frank’s name on them—” The chairman interrupted him now:
“And the committee wants to express here and now to you other pilots who were con—” Now he was interrupted by one of the men beside him:
“ — and on behalf of Colonel Feinman.”
“Yes — and on behalf of Colonel Feinman — contemporaries and friends of Lieutenant Burnham, its sincere regret at last night’s unfortunate accident.”
“Yair,” the announcer said; he had not even looked towards the speaker, he just waited until he had got through. “So they — the committee — feel that they are advertising something they can’t produce. They feel that Frank’s name should come off the programme. I agree with them there and I know you will too.”
“Why not take it off, then?” one of the second group said. “Yes,” the announcer said. “They are going to. But the only way they can do that is to have new programmes printed, you see.” But they did not see yet. They just looked at him, waiting. The chairman cleared his throat, though at the moment there was nothing for him to interrupt.
“We had these programmes printed for your benefit and convenience as contestants, as well as that of the spectators, without whom I don’t have to remind you there would be no cash prizes for you to win.
So you see, in a sense you contestants are the real benefactors of these printed programmes. Not us; the schedule of these events can be neither information nor surprise to us, since we were privy to the arranging of them even if we are not to the winning — since we have been given to understand (and I may add, have seen for ourselves) that air racing has not yet reached the, ah, scientific heights of horse-racing—”
He cleared his throat again; a thin polite murmur of laughter rose from about the table and died away. “We had these programmes printed at considerable expense, none of which devolved on you, yet they were planned and executed for your — I won’t say profit, but convenience and benefit. We had them printed in good faith that what we guaranteed in them would be performed; we knew no more than you did that that unfortunate ac—”
“Yes,” the announcer said. “It’s like this. Somebody has got to pay to have new programmes printed. These g — this… they say we — the contestants and announcers and everybody drawing jack from the meet, should do it.”
They did not make a sound, the still faces did not change expression; it was the announcer himself, speaking now in a tone urgent, almost pleading, where no dissent had been offered or intimated: “It’s just two and a half per cent. We’re all in it; I’m in it, too. Just two and a half per cent.; when it comes out of prize money, like they say, you won’t notice it because you haven’t got it anyway until after the cut is taken out.
Just two and a half per cent., and—” The man in the second group spoke for the second time:
“Or else?” he said. The announcer did not answer. After a moment Shumann said:
“Is that all?”
“Yes,” the announcer said. Shumann rose.
“I better get back on my valves,” he said. Now when he and the jumper crossed the rotunda the crowd was trickling steadily through the gates. They worked into line and shuffled up to the gates too before they learned that they would have to have grand-stand tickets to pass.
So they turned and worked towards the hangar, walking now in a thin deep drone from somewhere up in the sun, though presently they could see them — a flight of army pursuit single seaters circling the field in formation to land and then coming in, fast, blunt-nosed, fiercely-raked, viciously powerful. “They’re over-souped,” Shumann said. “They will kill you if you don’t watch them. I wouldn’t
