"They don't quite seem to be the gov'ment," he reflected, after
an interval. "It's more like some firm's paper. All this
printed stuff at the top. Drachenflieger. Drachenballons.
Ballonstoffe. Kugelballons. Greek to me.

"But he was trying to sell his blessed secret abroad. That's all
right. No Greek about that! Gollys! Here IS the secret!"

He tumbled off the seat, opened the locker, and had the portfolio
open before him on the folding-table. It was full of drawings
done in the peculiar flat style and conventional colours
engineers adopt. And, in, addition there were some rather
under-exposed photographs, obviously done by an amateur, at close
quarters, of the actual machine's mutterings had made, in its
shed near the Crystal Palace. Bert found he was trembling.
"Lord" he said, "here am I and the whole blessed secret of
flying--lost up here on the roof of everywhere.

"Let's see!" He fell to studying the drawings and comparing them
with the photographs. They puzzled him. Half of them seemed to
be missing. He tried to imagine how they fitted together, and
found the effort too great for his mind.

"It's tryin'," said Bert. "I wish I'd been brought up to the
engineering. If I could only make it out!"

He went to the side of the car and remained for a time staring
with unseeing eyes at a huge cluster of great clouds--a cluster
of slowly dissolving Monte Rosas, sunlit below. His attention