And though this reminiscence passed over my head, it was plain that they were getting on. Very soon I might expect to be told outright that Chummy Smith was Chummy Smith and a pal, and they would be damned if they would see him in the cart till things were much clearer than they were. So I simply leaned back and amused myself with mental pictures. They were jumbled pictures, but I knew I was sharing them with the other two. I seemed to see their East Coast Base, with planes homing in the evening and the M.L.'s suddenly appearing out of the mists and dropping anchor in the tideway. I seemed to see the rubber-coated and white-mufflered figures striding up the jetty to that Mess they spoke of and loudly demanding drinks and food and hot baths. I imagined the mechanics filling up the tanks and the Duty Officer swearing at the snow and slush as he stamped up and down the 'drome. And, faint and ineffectual as my pictures were, they still had a little of the magic of that life in which gayety and tragedy came so close and the chances of life and death were so intertwined. I also guessed what a purist in the matter of picking up pistols might find himself up against if he pushed his purism inconveniently far. Esdaile took the plunge even more quickly than I expected. I saw the little effort with which he pulled himself together. "Well, it's no good beating about the bush," he said. "We all know how things are. The question is what's to be done." I don't think he realized, as he pulled out his pipe, that that was now hardly the question at all. Already the question was, not what was to be done, but exactly how it was to be done. XII For, if he had realized, he could hardly have overlooked the immensely important point he did overlook. It was left to me to draw his attention to this point. For when one man kills another, it necessarily follows that one man has been, killed _by_ another. And it further follows that, if you decide to shield the killer because he is your friend, you are inevitably forced into an unfriendly attitude towards the victim. What about the victim and his rights in the matter? You may believe it or not, but until this moment I don't think this aspect of the affair had occurred either to Hubbard or Esdaile. All had been Chummy. More than this: so exclusively had Chummy occupied their thoughts that they had forgotten the ordinary physical fact that a bullet fired into a man's body makes a hole--the same ugly kind of hole whether the person who makes it is your friend or not. Loyalty to friendship in the teeth of the Law is not always the simple thing it sounds. Among the various facts that faced us was one inescapable one, namely, that a man called Maxwell was at that moment lying in a mortuary awaiting a post-mortem examination. Esdaile was frowning and clawing his jaw. The realization was sinking in now all right. "What had you thought of doing with the pistol anyway?" I asked.