R.N. "You don't mean to say that you had the infernal neck to take your whack——"

A mere wretched wavy-ringed fellow to loot bottle for bottle with his betters like that!

But Esdaile, with a wink, demanded the key of the cellar from Monty Rooke, told him to get the liqueur glasses out, and was off.

It was at that moment that the crash came that seemed to bring the whole of Chelsea running out of doors.

The shrill cry of "The aeroplane! The aeroplane!" was hardly out of the children's mouths before it was upon us—I don't mean the aeroplane, but the other thing. Judging from the harsh but muffled roar, the first installment of the crash, so to speak, which was the plane itself, must have been a quarter of a mile away; but between that and the second one there was hardly time to take breath. Simultaneously, as it seemed, there came a rushing of air, a loud cracking, and a nauseating thud on the studio roof; and Joan Merrow ran in with the children, one under either arm and her head down. The street outside[Pg 19] was a sudden clatter of running feet and short spasmodic cries.

[Pg 19]

"Good God, right on our heads!" the Commander muttered, his eyes aloft.

The next moment he was at the studio door looking for Esdaile.

Had he found him I should not be writing this story. Not finding him, he assumed command.

"All right. All over now, little fellows. There won't be any more. Mrs. Esdaile, you ladies will stay just where you are, please. Get on to the telephone, Mackwith. You other fellows come with me."

He thought it better that somebody should investigate before the women began to move about too freely.

IV

One order at any rate was superfluous—that to telephone to the police. Aeroplanes do not crash in Chelsea in the middle of the morning unobserved. Already the windows on the other side of the street were packed with faces, and every face was turned in the same direction.

This was towards the torn fabric of a parachute that had lodged partly on the studio roof, partly in the branches of the mulberry in the garden.

Hubbard ran out through the French windows and looked up. Tapes trailed and rippled and fluttered in the merry morning breeze, and the 

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