Chapter 2

I have told the foregoing in some detail because I want you to see the
careless and happy party into which that morning's bolt dropped a
quarter of an hour later. I want you to see the contrast between our
homely light-heartedness and the complex tangle of all that followed. I
will now tell you what the bolt was.

Breakfast was over, and we men had gone into the studio again. Mrs.
Cunningham was helping Mollie to clear away, and Joan Merrow had joined
the children in the garden, and with them was looking up at an
aeroplane, the soft organ-like note of which had suddenly ceased. We
were having Hubbard's views on Art again.

"But that submarine sketch of yours is the pick of all you've done to my
mind, Esdaile," he was saying. "Old Horne at the periscope, eh? You
caught him to a hair; a snapshot couldn't have been better! And we
bagged that beggar ten minutes later, Norwegian flag and all," he added
with professional satisfaction.

Philip Esdaile gave a quick exclamation.

"By Jove, that just reminds me! The orange curaçao, of course! The very
thing after all that fruit--corrects the acidity, as the doctors say.
We'll have some."

The Commander gave him a sharp look. On the face of it there was no very
evident reason why the torpedoing of a German ship flying the Norwegian
flag should remind Esdaile of orange curaçao, but no doubt there was a
story behind that we others knew nothing of. If ships have to be put
down there is no sense in sending bottles of delectable liqueur to the
bottom of the sea also.

"What!" cried Commander Hubbard, R.N. "You don't mean to say that _you_
had the infernal neck to take your whack----"

A mere wretched wavy-ringed fellow to loot bottle for bottle with his
betters like that!

But Esdaile, with a wink, demanded the key of the cellar from Monty
Rooke, told him to get the liqueur glasses out, and was off.

It was at that moment that the crash came that seemed to bring the whole
of Chelsea running out of doors.

The shrill cry of "The aeroplane! The aeroplane!" was hardly out of the
children's mouths before it was upon us--I don't mean the aeroplane, but
the other thing. Judging from the harsh but muffled roar, the first
installment of the crash, so to speak, which was the plane itself, must
have been a quarter of a mile away; but between that and the second one
there was hardly time to take breath. Simultaneously, as it seemed,
there came a rushing of air, a loud cracking, and a nauseating thud on
the studio roof; and Joan Merrow ran in with the children, one under
either arm and her head down. The street outside was a sudden clatter
of running feet and short spasmodic cries.

"Good God, right on our heads!" the Commander muttered, his eyes aloft.

The next moment he was at the studio door looking for Esdaile.

Had he found him I should not be writing this story. Not finding him, he
assumed command.

"All right. All over now, little fellows. There won't be any more. Mrs.
Esdaile, you ladies will stay just where you are, please. Get on to the
telephone, Mackwith. You other fellows come with me."

He thought it better that somebody should investigate before the women
began to move about too freely.