"What's that?" I said, stopping short and staring blankly upwards, for, absurd though it seems, that weird sound seemed to come floating down from an infinite height above us.
"Not high enough," he muttered like a man in an ecstasy. "Not high enough yet."
He walked away from me then without another word. When I entered the cottage he was seated at the table sketching a woman's face—the same face I had seen in that other sketch of his, spectral, unreal, and lovely.
"What on earth——?" I began.
"Nothing on earth," he answered in a strange voice. Then he laughed and jumped up, and tore his sketch across.
He seemed quite his old self again, chatty and pleasant, and with his old passion for talking "shop." He launched into a long explanation of some scheme he had in mind for securing automatic balancing.
I never told anyone about that strange, mocking laugh, in fact, I had almost forgotten the incident altogether when something brought every detail back to my memory. I had a letter from a person who signed himself "George Barnes."
Barnes, it seemed, was the operator who had taken the pictures of that last ascent, and as he understood I had been Mr. Thorpe's greatest friend, he wanted to see me. Certain expressions in the letter aroused my curiosity. I replied. He asked for an appointment at a time that was not very convenient, and finally I arranged to call at his house one evening.
It was one of those smart little six-room villas of which so many have been put up in the London suburbs of late. Barnes was buying it on the instalment system, and I quite won his heart by complimenting him on it. But for that, I doubt if anything would have come of my visit, for he was plainly nervous and ill at ease and very repentant of ever having said anything. But after my compliment to the house we got on better.
"It's on my mind," he said; "I shan't be easy till someone else knows."