did not appear, nor what beyond a money payment could be expected
from a modern state in such an affair. The general effect upon
judicious observers, indeed, was not that he was treating for
anything, but that he was using an unexampled opportunity to
bellow and show off to an attentive world. Rumours of his real
identity spread abroad. It was said that he had been the
landlord of an ambiguous hotel in Cape Town, and had there given
shelter to, and witnessed, the experiments and finally stolen the
papers and plans of, an extremely shy and friendless young
inventor named Palliser, who had come to South Africa from
England in an advanced stage of consumption, and died there.
This, at any rate, was the allegation of the more outspoken
American press. But the proof or disproof of that never reached
the public.

Mr. Butteridge also involved himself passionately in a tangle of
disputes for the possession of a great number of valuable money
prizes. Some of these had been offered so long ago as 1906 for
successful mechanical flight. By the time of Mr. Butteridge's
success a really very considerable number of newspapers, tempted
by the impunity of the pioneers in this direction, had pledged
themselves to pay in some cases, quite overwhelming sums to the
first person to fly from Manchester to Glasgow, from London to
Manchester, one hundred miles, two hundred miles in England, and
the like. Most had hedged a little with ambiguous conditions,
and now offered resistance; one or two paid at once, and
vehemently called attention to the fact; and Mr. Butteridge
plunged into litigation with the more recalcitrant, while at the
same time sustaining a vigorous agitation and canvass to induce
the Government to purchase his invention.