Now he's going to loop the
loop."
But the wheels of the aeroplane still pointed to the ground. It grew
smaller and smaller. It was a mere speck.
"What the dickens?"
Far away to the West something showed up against the blue of the
sky--something that might have been a bird, a toy kite, or an
aeroplane traveling rapidly into the sunset.
Four pairs of eyes followed it in rapt silence.
THE EPISODE OF THE FINANCIAL NAPOLEON
Second of a Series of Six Stories
[First published in _Pictorial Review_, June 1916]
Seated with his wife at breakfast on the veranda which overlooked the
rolling lawns and leafy woods of his charming Sussex home, Geoffrey
Windlebird, the great financier, was enjoying the morning sun to the
full. His chubby features were relaxed in a smile of lazy contentment;
and his wife, who liked to act sometimes as his secretary, found it
difficult to get him to pay any attention to his morning's mail.
"There's a column in to-day's _Financial Argus_," she said, "of which you
really must take notice. It's most abusive. It's about the Wildcat
Reef. They assert that there never was any gold in the mine, and that
you knew it when you floated the company.
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