at the conclusion of the bargain, and stopped.



The next morning the name of Filmer was, for the first time, less

conspicuous in the New Paper than in any other daily paper in the world.

The rest of the world's instructors, with varying emphasis, according

to their dignity and the degree of competition between themselves

and the New Paper, proclaimed the "Entire Failure of the New Flying

Machine," and "Suicide of the Impostor." But in the district of North

Surrey the reception of the news was tempered by a perception of unusual

aerial phenomena.



Overnight Wilkinson and MacAndrew had fallen into violent argument

on the exact motives of their principal's rash act.



"The man was certainly a poor, cowardly body, but so far as his

science went he was NO impostor," said MacAndrew, "and I'm prepared

to give that proposition a very practical demonstration, Mr. Wilkinson,

so soon as we've got the place a little more to ourselves. For I've

no faith in all this publicity for experimental trials."



And to that end, while all the world was reading of the certain

failure of the new flying machine, MacAndrew was soaring and curvetting

with great amplitude and dignity over the Epsom and Wimbledon divisions;

and Banghurst, restored once more to hope and energy, and regardless

of public security and the Board of Trade, was pursuing his gyrations

and trying to attract his attention, on a motor car and in his pyjamas--

he had caught sight of the ascent when pulling up the blind of his

bedroom window--equipped, among other things, with a film camera

that was subsequently discovered to be jammed. And Filmer

was lying on the billiard table in the green pavilion with a sheet

about his body.





2. THE MAGIC SHOP



I had seen the Magic Shop from afar several times; I had passed

it once or twice, a shop window of alluring little objects, magic

balls, magic hens, wonderful cones, ventriloquist dolls, the material

of the basket trick, packs of cards that LOOKED all right, and all

that sort of thing, but never had I thought of going in until one day,

almost without warning, Gip hauled me by my finger right up to

the window, and so conducted himself that there was nothing for it

but to take him in. I had not thought the place was there, to tell

the truth--a modest-sized frontage in Regent Street, between

the picture shop and the place where the chicks run about just

out of patent incubators, but there it was sure enough. I had fancied

it was down nearer the Circus, or round the corner in Oxford Street,

or even in Holborn; always over the way and a little inaccessible

it had been, with something of the mirage in its position; but here

it was now quite indisputably, and the fat end of Gip's pointing



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