CARRYING OVERWEIGHT 



the car. Slowly the weights holding the machine to 

 the ground were taken away. " Le Cadavre " had 

 control of the lever and the steering wheel, and we all 

 \vaited. I took out my race-glasses so that I could 

 follow the flight. The bags had nearly all gone by this 

 time. Enfin! But it moved not! A torrent of 

 words from the dreamer — three hundred and fifty a 

 minute, I should think — and he flew into a towering 

 rage with the financier. How could the thing go up 

 with that mountain of flesh in the car ? It was 

 necessary, evidently, to put some more bags on, so 

 that the thing should not fly up when " tubby " 

 stepped out. We lifted the " Chancellor " out, and 

 then the bags were released once more. It stuck 

 fast. We tried lifting the car and machinery so as to 

 assist it, and cut away part of the superfluous plat- 

 form, but it was no good ; it declared quite half-a-ton 

 overweight. There were no tears, no undue excite- 

 ment. Still optimism reigned. Giving rapid instruc- 

 tions, the balloon was detached and allowed to 

 deflate itself. He wished to show that the wings 

 could propel it, so it was brought out into the road : 

 I must explain that it was on wheels. The motor set 

 it off and it ran at quite a mile an hour, the great 

 wings flapping and causing it to proceed down a slight 

 decline. The inventor was ecstatic. " You see," he 

 said, " in case of storm we can descend to earth, pack 

 up the balloon and' — motor home ; in fact, I believe it 

 will revolutionise motoring." 



W^hat was the end of it? A sale of scrap iron, a 

 tired man doing two days a week to keep body and soul 

 together, a deadly feud against the financier who handled 

 all the boodle, and a permanent hard-luck recital and 

 desperate conviction that he had never had a fair chance. 



Another inventor was of quite a different type. 

 179 



