Besides, the Moving Fortress wasn’t his idea.  Drayton had had it first.  Anybody might have had it.  He hadn’t spoken of it first; but that was nothing.  The point was that he had had it first, and Nicky wasn’t going to take it from him.

It meant more to Drayton, who was in the Service, than it could possibly mean to him.  He hadn’t even got a profession.

As he walked back through the fields to the station, he said to himself that he didn’t really care.  It was only one more jolly sell.  He didn’t like giving up his Moving Fortress; but it wouldn’t end him.  There was something in him that would go on.

He would make another engine.

He didn’t care.  There was something in him that would go on.

“I can’t see,” Desmond had said, “why Captain Drayton should be allowed to walk off with your idea.”

“He’s worked five years on it.”

“He hasn’t worked it out yet, and you have.  Can’t you see “—­her face was dark and hard with anger—­“there’s money in it?”

“If there is, all the more reason why I shouldn’t bag it.”

“And where do I come in?”

“Not just here, I’m afraid.  It isn’t your business.”

“Not my business?  When I did the drawings?  You couldn’t possibly have done them yourself.”

At that point Nicky refused to discuss the matter farther.

And still Desmond brooded on her grievance.  And still at intervals Desmond brought it up again.

“There’s stacks of money in your father’s business—­”

“There’s stacks of money in that Moving Fortress—­”

“You are a fool, Nicky, to throw it all away.”

He never answered her.  He said to himself that Desmond was hysterical and had a morbid fancy.

* * * * *

But it didn’t end there.

He had taken the drawings and the box that had the model of the Moving Fortress in it and buried them in the locker under the big north window in Desmond’s studio.

And there, three weeks later, Desmond found them.  And she packed the model of the Moving Fortress and marked it “Urgent with Care,” and sent it to the War Office with a letter.  She packed the drawings in a portfolio—­having signed her own and Nicky’s name on the margins—­and sent them to Captain Drayton with a letter.  She said she had no doubt she was doing an immoral thing; but she did it in fairness to Captain Drayton, for she was sure he would not like Nicky to make so great a sacrifice.  Nicky, she said, was wrapped up in his Moving Fortress.  It was his sweetheart, his baby.  “He will never forgive me,” she said, “as long as he lives.  But I simply had to let you know.  It means so much to him.”

For she thought, “Because Nicky’s a fool, I needn’t be one.”

Drayton came over the same evening after he had got the letter.  He shouted with laughter.

“Nicky,” he said, “you filthy rotter, why on earth didn’t you tell me?...  It was Nickyish of you....  What if I did think of it first?  I should have had to come to you for the details.  It would have been jolly to have worked it out together....  Not a bit of it!  Your wife’s absolutely right.  Good thing, after all, you married her.