Page:Wells - The War in the Air (Boni & Liveright, 1918).djvu/30

18 fenced in — a sort of valley. Fences of barbed wire ten feet high, and inside that they do things. Chaps about the camp — now and then we get a peep. It isn't only us neither. There's the Japanese; you bet they got it too — and the Germans!"

The soldier stood with his legs very wide apart, and filled his pipe thoughtfully. Bert sat on the low wall against which his motor-bicycle was leaning.

"Funny thing fighting'll be," he said.

"Flying's going to break out," said the soldier. "When it does come, when the curtain does go up, I tell you you'll find every one on the stage — busy.... Such fighting, too!... I suppose you don't read the papers about this sort of thing?"

"I read 'em a bit," said Bert.

"Well, have you noticed what one might call the remarkable case of the disappearing inventor — the inventor who turns up in a blaze of publicity, fires off a few successful experiments, and vanishes?"

"Can't say I 'ave," said Bert.

"Well, I 'ave, anyhow. You get anybody come along who does anything striking in this line, and, you bet, he vanishes. Just goes off quietly out of sight. After a bit, you don't hear anything more of 'em at all. See? They disappear. Gone — no address. First — oh! it's an old story now — there was those Wright Brothers out in America. They glided — they glided miles and miles. Finally they glided off