Read Airship Shape & Bristol Fashion for Free Online Page A

being of the aged-and-infirm variety, however, wanted to send his son to make a personal inspection before anything was engraved in bronze, as they say.
     
    The son, Lord Bramford, had a desperate terror of heights and an even more desperate terror of his father learning about it. He got Moggy aside in private and asked if someone else couldn’t possibly go in his stead. A proxy, as it were, who could have a look about, take some notes, and so on. If, that is, a fellow could be found who bore a close enough resemblance, had the right manner, and could be counted on to play along.
     
    Someone like, say, Reginald Wilmott.
     
    Moggy’d get his account and approval to marry Gertrude, Bramford wouldn’t have to make the dizzying ascent, the viscount and old Plimsby would be none the wiser. Everyone happy, victory all around, hey what, and pop the bubbly for the home team.
     
    In the meanwhile, here I was, aboard this citadel of brass and steel as it droned its endless circuitous route above Bristol. I’d heard somewhere that Plimsby did this to avoid certain laws, taxes, and regulations — his factory not therefore technically being
within
city limits, and so forth — crafty, if a bit uncouth.
     
    The noise of the machinery drowned out most shots at meaningful conversation, which suited me just as well. I was, remember, impersonating the son of the viscount of something-or-another.
     
    As for the actual inspection, I daresay it went well enough. Not that I understood half of what I was seeing, but, I was a social-events veteran at nodding in the right places even when I had little inkling of the particulars. Words such as “amazing” and “dashed impressive” tumbled from my lips at appropriate intervals.
     
    I also had Moggy and Gertrude (she was in on it, of course; the sweeter they look, the more devious they are) on hand to coach me as needed.
     
    No doubt, the whole affair was helped along by the fact that George Plimsby, a man who’d made his fortune through hard labour and the sweat of his brow, was properly overwhelmed by titles and peerage. Not to mention a snappy suit. The state of my flat notwithstanding, few were on par with Reggie Wilmott when it came to putting on the ritz. If my jacket was a tad on the bold side — Moggy’s eyes half-popped when he saw it — well, it had been very much the fashion at the shore this season, and easily excused as an eccentricity. Plimsby himself was dazzled to the bone, I dare say.
     
    I won’t say the old chap fell all
over
himself at meeting the purported son of a viscount, didn’t kowtow or the like. Still, he knew what was what. Those Fine Plimsby Products were very much the rage among the
nouveau riche
and jazzy set, but it was slow going to convince the blue-bloods to embrace certain modern conveniences over tradition. Nominal patronage of a viscount would go a fair ways in that regard.
     
    So, I went on the factory tour and made the duly admiring remarks. I even took a habits-and-preferences test, filling out a questionnaire done with a punch card and brass stylus, which was then fed into a device that made bulbs flash and ticker-tapes chatter. Very technical, don’t you know, very STOTA, as they might say, state of the art.
     
    By the end of the thing, a deal had been struck that must have been satisfactory all around. More than satisfactory, judging by the dazzled lights gleaming in more than a few pairs of eyes.
     
    I shook hands with old Plimsby. He wrung mine with a fervent and calloused grip that almost put me in fear for the Wilmott digits.
     
    “I’d be delighted, Lord Bramford, if you’d accept the gift of a prototype, with my compliments,” he told me.
     
    “Oh?” I let him have my best beaming smile and hoped he didn’t catch on that I’d come through this entire afternoon with the barest notion of just what this newfangled product he’d been pushing even was. “Awfully good of you, old chap, but hardly —”
     
    “In fact,