I had revealed much to Inspector Barton before Roseye's disappearance. I had told him of my suspicions of Eastwell, but I suppose he had—as natural to an investigator of crime—regarded those suspicions as the natural outcome of a man's jealousy. But they were not, because I had never been jealous of the man—not until we sat there on the lawn before the hotel, and she had told me how she had spent an afternoon at the theatre in his company.
As a matter of fact jealousy had never entered my head. Previously I had always regarded Eastwell as quite a good fellow, full of the true stamina of a patriot. He had been, I knew, full of schemes for the future of aviation in England ever since he had taken his first flap at the aerodrome. Once, indeed, he had serious thoughts, in the pre-war days, of putting up as Parliamentary candidate for a Yorkshire borough. But the matter fell through because the Opposition, on their part, ran a man whose chances were assured—an Anglo-Indian colonel who had passed through every local distinction, from being a member of the local Board of Guardians to becoming a D. L. Against such odds Eastwell could not fight. In the great game of politics it has ever been that the local man who spends his money with the local butcher, baker and candlestick-maker, is usually returned with a thumping majority.
The man from afar, the man with a mission, the man who knows his job and will dare to raise his voice in the House to declaim his country's shortcomings, will usually be jeered at as a 'carpet-bagger' and hopelessly outpaced and outvoted.
