His commission was no bother to me; indeed, I found the latter part of it rather interesting. I had no desire to exchange further words with the "Chelsea Auctioneer," as Glenfield had described Westbury, but I confess that I had a curiosity about him. I had probably queered his pitch if he hoped to get Smith into Court on a technical point and then to fly off at score about bullets, pistols and pocket-patting at the foot of ladders; but I did not know what other means of making himself a nuisance he might not have. Old Dadley might be able to tell me. Dadley probably knew Inspector Webster as well. But I could not now see Dadley till Monday, and as for the visit to Lennox Street, Sunday afternoon would do for that. Sunday morning I intended to spend in writing the first of those articles for the _Circus_. I went to bed, slept well, rose early, and was at my desk betimes. Those two articles, and the numerous subsequent ones I wrote, need not detain us here. Indeed, just as you will have to take the legal aspects of our Case largely on Mackwith's word, so for the journalistic side of it I refer you to Lord Glenfield and his group of papers. But it is possible that you may remember something of the wave of opinion we set in motion, for it is not so very long ago. Deliberately I sought, and successfully obtained, correspondence--a correspondence that embraced, directly or obliquely, practically every side of the subject, from the personality of famous pilots to the constitution of the new Ministry of the Air. We have, of course, the general balance of our papers to consider, but within those limits I fairly let myself go. And if you tell me that I did all this to save Charles Valentine Smith from the hands of justice, I answer that I did it because ten short years have made the air and everything connected with it as important to us as the sea. If you tell me that I did it because I was Philip Esdaile's friend, I reply that I did it because I was just beginning to see on what a hair our destiny might hang if a new and gigantic industry, suddenly hung up in mid-career, should be left unsupported, unrecognized, unencouraged. If you charge me that I did it because of Joan and her happiness, I retort that I was by this time wholly convinced that Hay and Hubbard were right, that the next attack on one nation by another would come with appalling swiftness, would be directed at civilian nerves as much as at uniformed bodies, would be the beginning of the thousand years in which the Devil is to be unchained, and the sooner the public realized the situation the better. So I wrote my first article, read it over, decided that it was pretty much what was wanted, and lunched lightly at home, as is my Sunday custom. Then, at about three o'clock, I put Esdaile's letter into my pocket and set out for Lennox Street. VII