to be hot, and that reminded him of the rustling he had heard in
the night. He took off the waistcoat and examined it. "Old
Butteridge won't like me unpicking this." He hesitated, and
finally proceeded to unpick it. He found the missing drawings of
the lateral rotating planes, on which the whole stability of the
flying machine depended.

An observant angel would have seen Bert sitting for a long time
after this discovery in a state of intense meditation. Then at
last he rose with an air of inspiration, took Mr. Butteridge's
ripped, demolished, and ransacked waistcoat, and hurled it from
the balloon whence it fluttered down slowly and eddyingly until
at last it came to rest with a contented flop upon the face of
German tourist sleeping peacefully beside the Hohenweg near
Wildbad. Also this sent the balloon higher, and so into a
position still more convenient for observation by our imaginary
angel who would next have seen Mr. Smallways tear open his own
jacket and waistcoat, remove his collar, open his shirt, thrust
his hand into his bosom, and tear his heart out--or at least, if
not his heart, some large bright scarlet object. If the
observer, overcoming a thrill of celestial horror, had
scrutinised this scarlet object more narrowly, one of Bert's most
cherished secrets, one of his essential weaknesses, would have
been laid bare. It was a red-flannel chest-protector, one of
those large quasi-hygienic objects that with pills and medicines
take the place of beneficial relics and images among the
Protestant peoples of Christendom. Always Bert wore this thing;
it was his cherished delusion, based on the advice of a shilling
fortune-teller at Margate, that he was weak in the lungs.