"This Scepter action. I see it's down on the List. You're a friend of Esdaile's. I suppose it won't affect him in any way?" "What's the action about?" I asked. "Here you are. '_The Aiglon Aviation Company v. The Scepter Assurance Corporation._' The Scepter people are resisting the claim on the grounds that the machine had no business to be where it was. They also allege negligence on the pilot's part, or so at least McIlwaine tells me. He's briefed. Is it true you were at Esdaile's when it happened?" "Yes." "Do you know the pilot?" "No. I believe he's away with Esdaile in the country at present." "Well, he can be getting ready to come back to town. It's down for Trinity term. I should say the whole action turns on him. Worrying sort of thing to have to go through on the top of a bad crash, but the Scepter's got to fight it. If flying ever comes to anything the position's got to be made clear." "_If_ it comes to anything?" I queried idly.... "Apart from Hay's point of view, I mean. I don't see myself that it's achieved very much yet outside war. Too risky and uncertain altogether. There isn't a flyer on the Rhine at present who'll take his leave by aeroplane; he might lose a day. And if this Atlantic flight does come off it'll be rather like Channel-swimming--done once and then not again for another forty years. Just a record. I can't see there's much more in it yet." Here Atkinson's voice struck in. I hadn't heard him enter. "Yes, but what about other places--Australia, for instance? It's catching on there all right from what I'm told. Say you've a station ninety miles from your front door to your back. An aeroplane'll do in an hour or two what it would take you two or three days to do in a buggy. Any number of these fellows are running their private planes now. And we're making the machines." "And there isn't much doubt they'll be having a go at the Cape-to-Cairo route presently," somebody else remarked. (I am giving this desultory conversation very much as it happened, since I felt exceedingly desultory myself and it all contributed to the impression of Chummy Smith and the nature of his job that was slowly building itself up in my mind.) "Well, that's a different thing again. I should say the value of that would be largely scientific, at any rate at first. Like the Shackleton and Scott expeditions." Mowbray laughed. "Are you one of those who think those were primarily scientific?" he asked. "What else were they?" Whereupon we had the matter from the point of view of Ronald Mowbray, ex-amateur champion and still the soundest of referees.