Free No Highway by Nevil Shute

the mosquitoes. I’ll get a letter through to Ottawa asking them to kit you up for the trip, and we can charge it up as necessary expenses. I should take the boots with you, or … no, they’ll supply those too. But look, Honey, go in your best suit. You’re going as the representative of this Establishment. Put on a bit of dog, you know. Don’t let anybody sit on you in any technical matter; you’re the expert,and you’re the man that counts. We’ll back you up from here in anything you feel you’ve got to insist on.”
    He nodded. “I’ll remember that,” he said.
    “Now, how about your personal affairs? Are you all right with those?”
    He hesitated. “Well, no, I’m not. I’ve got a man from the electricity company coming in one day next week to fit up that electric hot-water heater. And then there’s Elspeth—I shall have to see if I can get somebody to come and sleep in the house, I suppose. It’s rather a long time for her to be alone.”
    I was a bit staggered at the suggestion that he could leave Elspeth alone at all. “What about her?” I asked. “Have you got a relative who could come and stay with her?”
    He shook his head. “I don’t think there’s anybody like that.” He paused for a minute in thought, and then he said, “Don’t worry about that, Dr. Scott—I’ll think of something. I’ve left her for two days at a time, once or twice when I had to. Of course, she’s older now, but I think this is much too long to do that. I think I can get Mrs. Higgs—that’s my charwoman—I think she’d come and sleep in while I’m away.”
    The thought was distasteful to me, but it was at any rate a possible solution to his problem. If we had had a second bedroom at the flat I would have offered to put up his child myself, but we hadn’t. Moreover, Honey’s domestic affairs were really no concern of mine and there was a limit to the extent that I could allow them to influence me in the work of the Establishment. But I was sorry for Elspeth.
    “I’ll see that you get back as soon as ever we can manage it,” I said.
    “That’s very good of you—I really don’t want to be away longer than is necessary, for a variety of reasons.” His eyes dropped to the accident report on the desk before us. “Have you told the Rutland Company anything about this yet?”
    I had forgotten all about the design staff who had produced the Reindeer, or if I had remembered them I had placed them in the background of my mind. “I haven’t told them anything about it yet,” I said slowly. “I thought perhaps it was better to wait until the matter was rather more definite. Do you think we ought to get in touch with Prendergast now?”
    “I don’t want to,” he said quickly. “I was wondering if you had.”
    “No, I hadn’t done anything about it.” The apprehensionof a new series of difficulties swept over me. E. P. Prendergast was the Chief Designer of the Rutland Aircraft Company, and the author of the Reindeer. In person he was a big, dark man with bushy black eyebrows and the face of an ascetic monk. He was about six foot four in height and broad in proportion to his height; he was nearly sixty years old, but he was still a very powerful man. He was one of the oldest and most successful chief designers in the country, and the Reindeer was the last of a long line of lovely aircraft that had come out of his office. He was a very great artist at the business of designing aeroplanes, and like all great designers in the aircraft industry he was a perfect swine to deal with.
    There is, of course, a good explanation in psychology for this universal characteristic of the greatest aeroplane designers. A beautiful aircraft is the expression of the genius of a great engineer who is also a great artist. It is impossible for that man to carry out the whole of the design himself; he works through a design office staffed by a hundred draughtsmen or more. A hundred minds, each with their own less competent