One week
known merely to a few friends as a clever young engineer, the next his
name was on the lips of the civilised world. His first success was
followed by a series of remarkable feats, of which his flight above the
Atlantic, his race with the torpedo-boat-destroyers across the North
Sea, and his sensational display during the military man[oe]uvres on
Salisbury Plain, impressed his name and personality firmly upon the
fickle mind of the public, and explains the tremendous excitement caused
by his inexplicable disappearance during the great aviation meeting at
Attercliffe, near London, towards the end of the summer. Few people, I suppose, have forgotten the facts. For some time
previously he had been devoting himself more especially to ascending to
as great a height as possible. He held all the records for height, and
it was known that at Attercliffe he meant to endeavour to eclipse his
own achievements. It was a lovely day, not a breath of wind stirring, not a cloud in the
sky. We saw him start. We saw him fly up and up in great sweeping
spirals. We saw him climb higher and ever higher into the azure space. We watched him, those of us whose eyes could bear the strain, as he
dwindled to a dot and a speck, till at last he passed beyond sight. It was a stirring thing to see a man thus storm, as it were, the walls
of Heaven and probe the very mysteries of space. I remember I felt quite
annoyed with someone who was taking a cinematograph record. It seemed
such a sordid, business-like thing to be doing at such a moment. Presently the aeroplane came into sight again and was greeted with a
sudden roar of cheering. "He is doing a glide down," someone cried excitedly, and though someone
else declared that a glide from such a height was unthinkable and
impossible, yet it was soon plain that the first speaker was right. Down through unimaginable thousands of feet, straight and swift swept
the machine, making such a sweep as the eagle in its pride would never
have dared. People held their breath to watch, expecting every moment
some catastrophe. But the machine kept on an even keel, and in a few
moments I joined with the others in a wild rush to the field at a little
distance where the machine, like a mighty bird, had alighted easily and
safely. But when we reached it we doubted our own eyes, our own sanity. There
was no sign anywhere of Radcliffe Thorpe! No one knew what to say; we looked blankly at our neighbours, and one
man got down on his hands and knees and peered under the body of the
machine as if he suspected Radcliffe of hiding there. Then the chairman
of the meeting, Lord Fallowfield, made a curious discovery. "Look," he said in a high, shaken voice, "the steering wheel is jammed!" It was true. The steering wheel had been carefully fastened in one
position, and the lever controlling the planes had also been fixed so as
to hold them at the right angle for a downward glide. That was strange
enough, but in face of the mystery of Radcliffe's disappearance little
attention was paid it. Where, then, was its pilot? That was the question that was filling
everybody's mind. He had vanished as utterly as vanishes the mist one
sees rising in the sunshine. It was supposed he must have fallen from his seat, but as to how that
had happened, how it was that no fragment of his body or his clothing
was ever found, above all, how it was that his aeroplane had returned,
the engine cut off, the planes secured in correct position, no even
moderately plausible explanation was ever put forward. The loss to aeronautics was felt to be severe. From childhood Radcliffe
had shown that, in addition to this, he had a marked aptitude for
drawing, usually held at the service of his profession, but now and
again exercised in producing sketches of his friends. Among those who knew him privately he was fairly popular, though not,
perhaps, so much so as he deserved; certainly he had a way of talking
"shop" which was a trifle tiring to those who did not figure the world
as one vast engineering problem, while with women he was apt to be
brusque and short-mannered. My surprise, then, can be imagined when, calling one afternoon on him
and having to wait a little, I had noticed lying on his desk a crayon
sketch of a woman's face. It was a very lovely face, the features almost
perfect, and yet there was about it something unearthly and spectral
that was curiously disturbing. "Smitten at last?" I asked jestingly, and yet aware of a certain odd
discomfort. When, he saw what I was looking at he went very pale. "Who is it?" I asked. "Oh, just--someone!" he answered. He took the sketch from me, looked at it, frowned and locked it away. As
he seemed unwilling to pursue the subject, I went on to talk of the
business I had come about, and I congratulated him on his flight of the
day before in which he had broken the record for height. As I was going
he said:

"By the way, that sketch--what did you think of it?" "Why, that you had better be careful," I answered, laughing; "or you'll
be falling from your high estate of bachelordom." He gave so violent a start, his face expressed so much of apprehension
and dismay, that I stared at him blankly. Recovering himself with an
effort, he stammered out:

"It's not--I mean--it's an imaginary portrait." "Then," I said, amazed in my turn, "you've a jolly sight more
imagination than anyone ever credited you with." The incident remained in my mind. As a matter of fact, practical
Radcliffe Thorpe, absorbed in questions of strain and ease, his head
full of cylinders and wheels and ratchets and the Lord knows what else,
would have seemed to me the last man on earth to create that haunting,
strange, unearthly face, human in form, but not in expression. It was about this time that Radcliffe began to give so much attention to
the making of very high flights. His favourite time was in the early
morning, as soon as it was light. Then in the chill dawn he would rise
and soar and wing his flight high and ever higher, up and up, till the
eye could no longer follow his ascent. I remember he made one of these strange, solitary flights when I was
spending the week-end with him at his cottage near the Attercliffe
Aviation Grounds. I had come down from town somewhat late the night before, and I remember
that just before we went to bed we went out for a few minutes to enjoy
the beauty of a perfect night. The moon was shining in a clear sky, not
a sound or a breath disturbed the sublime quietude; in the south one
wondrous star gleamed low on the horizon. Neither of us spoke; it was
enough to drink in the beauty of such rare perfection, and I noticed how
Radcliffe kept his eyes fixed upwards on the dark blue vault of space. "Are you longing to be up there?" I asked him jestingly. He started and flushed, and he then went very pale, and to my surprise I
saw that he was shivering. "You are getting cold," I said. "We had better go in."