various pantechnicons, and the engines were boxed with peculiar
care. It became evident these precautions were not inadvisable
in view of the violent demand for any sort of photograph or
impressions of his machine. But Mr. Butteridge, having once made
his demonstration, intended to keep his secret safe from any
further risk of leakage. He faced the British public now with
the question whether they wanted his secret or not; he was, he
said perpetually, an "Imperial Englishman," and his first wish
and his last was to see his invention the privilege and monopoly
of the Empire. Only--

It was there the difficulty began.

Mr. Butteridge, it became evident, was a man singularly free from
any false modesty--indeed, from any modesty of any
kind--singularly willing to see interviewers, answer questions
upon any topic except aeronautics, volunteer opinions,
criticisms, and autobiography, supply portraits and photographs
of himself, and generally spread his personality across the
terrestrial sky. The published portraits insisted primarily upon
an immense black moustache, and secondarily upon a fierceness
behind the moustache. The general impression upon the public was
that Butteridge, was a small man. No one big, it was felt, could
have so virulently aggressive an expression, though, as a matter
of fact, Butteridge had a height of six feet two inches, and a
weight altogether proportionate to that. Moreover, he had a love
affair of large and unusual dimensions and irregular
circumstances and the still largely decorous British public
learnt with reluctance and alarm that a sympathetic treatment of
this affair was inseparable from the exclusive acquisition of the