After a time, the weekly gatherings in Fulham ceased. The model
had failed one day just for a moment to respond to Filmer's guidance,
or he had been distracted by the compliments of an archbishop.
At any rate, it suddenly dug its nose into the air just a little
too steeply as the archbishop was sailing through a Latin quotation
for all the world like an archbishop in a book, and it came down
in the Fulham Road within three yards of a 'bus horse. It stood
for a second perhaps, astonishing and in its attitude astonished,
then it crumpled, shivered into pieces, and the 'bus horse was
incidentally killed.
Filmer lost the end of the archiepiscopal compliment. He stood up
and stared as his invention swooped out of sight and reach of him.
His long, white hands still gripped his useless apparatus.
The archbishop followed his skyward stare with an apprehension
unbecoming in an archbishop.
Then came the crash and the shouts and uproar from the road
to relieve Filmer's tension. "My God!" he whispered, and sat down.
Every one else almost was staring to see where the machine had
vanished, or rushing into the house.
The making of the big machine progressed all the more rapidly
for this.
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