Apart from our own private interest in the affair, the news did not thrill. In America one's withers are unwrung by such scares. The "exclusiveness" of Lord Cholme's information, indeed, defeated his object. Lord Cholme, I knew, was loved neither in Fleet Street nor in Park Place. His ruthless competition with the news agencies, his capture of numerous cable-routes, had gradually divided England into two classes: those who read _The Morning_ and those who didn't. Everyone remembers the exclusive description of the destruction of Constantinople in _The Morning_. No one was surprised to find that the following day Constantinople was still alive and well. Clever young Oxford men who had not succeeded in getting a post on _The Morning_, satirized the paper in other journals who never paid more than two guineas a column. No doubt, having been a newspaper man myself, I discounted the effect of the scare upon the public. I could imagine the delicate raillery of the other papers, if indeed they deigned to notice Lord Cholme's exclusive information at all. The special biography was as accurate as such biographies usually are. It was written in a fair imitation of Mr. Kipling's racy colloquial style and contained numerous references to the Empire, the White Man's Burden and our "far-flung battle line." I suspected that Monsieur D'Aubigne had supplied the basic "facts" which had been edited by Lord Cholme before being handed on to "Vol-Plane," as the biographer called himself. I set the paper down and resumed my cigar. The drums and tramplings of Lord Cholme's organ had revealed nothing fresh. I understand now why my friends had merely mentioned the fact of its arrival and made no comment. After all, our real interest lay in the man, not in his aeroplane. We had never seen an aeroplane except in the cinema films, but we were familiar enough with current events to feel no surprise that a man had flown over the North Sea. I think I expressed our mutual sentiment when I observed that Cecil's story of how Frank Carville won his bet, and Mr. Carville's own account of the voyage from the Argentine to Genoa, told us far more about the man than "Vol-Plane's" highly-paid hack-work. We had been but a few minutes in the studio before Mr. Carville knocked and Mac ran down to admit him. We heard the rumble of voices while our visitor discarded his coat; comments on "the change," and then footsteps on the stairs. I went to the door to welcome him.