He went on, not running yet but fast. As he hurried up the apron the aeroplanes overtook and passed him, banked around the field pylon and faded on; he did not even look at them. Then suddenly he saw her, leading the little boy by the hand, emerge from the crowd about the gate to intercept him, wearing now a clean linen dress under the trench-coat, and a hat, the brown hat of the first evening.
He stopped. His hand went into his pocket and into his face came the expression, bright, quiet, almost smiling, as she walked fast up to him, staring at him with pale and urgent intensity.
“What is it?” she said. “What is this you have got him into?” He looked down at her with that expression, not yearning nor despair, but profound, tragic and serene like in the eyes of bird dogs.
“It’s all right,” he said. “My signature is on the note, too. It will hold. I am going in right now to testify; that’s all that’s holding them; that’s all that Ord has to—” He drew out the nickel and gave it to the boy.
“What?” she said. “Note? Note? The ship, you idiot!”
“Oh.” He smiled down at her. “The ship. We flew it, tested it over there. We made a field hop before we—”
“We?”
“Yes. I went with him. I laid on the floor in the tail, so we could find out where the weight ought to be to pass the burble. That’s all it was. We have a sandbag rigged now on a cable so he can let it slide back. It’s all right.”
“All right?” she said. “Good God, what can you know about it? Did he say it was all right?”
“Yes. He said last night he could land it. I knew he could. And now he won’t need to make but one more….”She stared at him, the eyes pale, cold and urgent, at the face worn, dreamy, and peaceful in the soft bright sun; again the aeroplanes came in and snored on and away.
Then he was interrupted; it was the amplifier; all the amplifiers up and down the apron began to call his name, telling the stands, the field, the land and lake and air, that he was wanted in the superintendent’s office at once.
“There it is,” he said. “Yair. I knew that the note would be the only thing that Ord could… That was why I signed it, too. And don’t you worry; all I need to do is walk in and say, ‘Yes, that’s my signature.’ And don’t you worry. He can fly it. He can fly anything. I used to think that Matt Ord was the best pilot alive, but now I”
The amplifier began to repeat itself. It faced him; it seemed to stare straight at him while it roared his name deliberately as though he had to be summoned not out of the living world of population but evoked, peremptory and repetitive, out of the air itself.
The one in the rotunda was just beginning again when he entered; the sound followed him through the door and across the ante-room, though beyond that it did not reach — not into the board room of yesterday where now Ord and Shumann alone occupied the hard chairs.
They had been ushered in a half-hour ago and sat down facing the men behind the table; Shumann saw Feinman for the first time, sitting not in the centre but at one end of the table where the announcer had sat yesterday, his suit, double-breasted still, tan instead of grey beneath the bright splash of the carnation.
He alone wore his hat; it appeared to be the smallest object about him; from beneath it his dark smooth face began at once to droop into folds of flesh which, constricted for the instant by his collar, swelled and rolled again beneath the tight creases of his coat. On the table one hand bearing a gold-clamped ruby held a burning cigar.
He did not even glance at Shumann and Ord; he was looking at Sales, the inspector… a square bald man with a blunt face which ordinarily would be quite pleasant, though not now… who was saying:
“Because I can ground it. I can forbid it to fly.”
“You mean, you can forbid anybody to fly it, don’t you?” Feinman said.
“Put it that way if you want to,” Sales said.
“Let’s say, put it that way for the record,” another voice said — a young man, sleek, in horn-rim glasses, sitting just back of Feinman. He was Feinman’s secretary; he spoke now with a kind of silken insolence, like the pampered, intelligent, hate-ridden eunuch mountebank of an eastern despot: “Colonel Feinman is, even before a public servant, a lawyer.”
“Yes; lawyer,” Feinman said. “Maybe country lawyer to Washington. Let me get this straight. You’re a government agent. All right. We have had our crops regimented and our fisheries regimented and even our money in the bank regimented.
All right. I still don’t see how they did it, but they did, and so we are used to that. If he was trying to make his living out of the ground and Washington come in and regimented him, all right. We might not understand it any more than he did, but we would say all right.
And if he was trying to make his living out of the river and the government come in and regimented him, we would say all right, too. But do you mean to tell me that Washington can come in and regiment a man that’s trying to make his living out of the air? Is there a crop reduction in the air, too?”
They — the others about the table (three of them were reporters) — laughed. They laughed with a kind of sudden and loud relief, as though they had been waiting all the time to find out just how they were supposed to listen, and now they knew.
Only Sales and Shumann and Ord did not laugh; then they noticed that the secretary was not laughing either and that he was already speaking, seemed to slide his silken voice into the laughter and stop it as abruptly as a cocaine needle in a nerve:
“Yes. Colonel Feinman is lawyer enough (perhaps Mr. Sales will add, country enough) to ask even a government official to show cause.
As the colonel understands it, this aeroplane bears a licence which Mr. Sales approved himself. Is that true, Mr. Sales?” For a moment Sales did not answer. He just looked at the secretary grimly.
“Because I don’t believe it is safe to fly,” he said. “That’s the cause.”
“Ah,” the secretary said. “For a moment I almost expected Mr. Sales to tell us that it would not fly; that it had perhaps walked over here from Blaisedell. Then all we would need to say would be ‘Good; we will not make it fly; we will just let it walk around the pylons during the race this afternoon —— —’”
Now they did laugh, the three reporters scribbling furiously. But it was not for the secretary: it was for Feinman. The secretary seemed to know this; while he waited for it to subside his unsmiling, insolent contempt touched them all face by face.
Then he spoke to Sales again. “You admit that it is licensed, that you approved it yourself — meaning, I take it, that it is registered at Washington as being fit and capable of discharging the function of an aeroplane, which is to fly.
Yet you later state that you will not permit it to fly because it is not capable of discharging the function for which you yourself admit having approved it — in simple language for us lawyers, that it cannot fly. Yet Mr. Ord has just told us that he flew it in your presence.
And Mr.” — he glanced down, the pause was less than pause— “Shumann states that he flew it once at Blaisedell before witnesses, and we know that he flew it here because we saw him. We all know that Mr. Ord is one of the best (we New Valoisians believe the best) pilots in the world, but don’t you think it barely possible, barely, I say, that the man who has flows it twice where Mr. Ord has flown it but once… Wouldn’t this almost lead one to think that Mr. Ord has some other motive for not wanting this aeroplane to compete in this race—”
“Yair,” Feinman said. He turned to look at Ord. “What’s the matter? Ain’t this airport good enough for your ships? Or ain’t this race important enough for you? Or do you just think he might beat you? Ain’t you going to use the aeroplane you broke the record in? Then what are you afraid of?” Ord glared from face to face about the table, then at Feinman again.
“Why do you want this ship in there this afternoon? What is it? I’d lend him the money, if that’s all it is.”
“Why?” Feinman said. “Ain’t we promised these folks out there” — he made a jerking sweep with the cigar— “a series of races? Ain’t they paying their money in here to see them? And ain’t it the more aeroplanes they will have to look at the better they will think they got for the money?
And why should he want to borrow money from you when he can maybe earn it at his job where he won’t have to pay it back or even the interest? Now, let’s settle this business.” He turned to Sales. “The ship is licensed, ain’t
