Chapter I

Michael Annarly was talking to Lady Sibyl Carson. He had been dining with the Carsons, and he was staying on after the other guests, deep in talk with his hostess. He was the last to move, excepting, of course, those who were staying in the house. These were all men; Carson did not encourage the idea of women visitors in case they should want to go out with the guns, and Lady Sibyl had few friends of her own sex for whom she cared enough to insist on inviting. The men lounged by the fire in the room, part hall, part billiard-room, to which the company had retired when the more formal guests departed. Lady Sibyl and Annarly were some distance from the others, she in a deep-seated chair which toned in colour with the golden russet of her dress and hair and eyes. Annarly sat beside her in earnest talk, as he had sat ever since their coming into the hall; since then neither had conceded even a pretence of recognising the existence of other people. When the one or two local guests, who had lingered on, came to take leave of their hostess, she for the moment waked to a recollection of their existence, made a few remarks in a charming manner, and then obviously went back in mind to where she was before. Annarly, who in spite of his thirty years was not really well versed in the ways of the world, certainly not of this world, did not acquit himself even so well as that. He remained completely absorbed until a rather pronounced yawn from one of the group by the fireplace arrested his attention and reminded him of the lateness of the hour and the way he had outstayed other people. He rose to say good-bye.

Lady Sibyl rose too; her eyes were shining and the whole of her beautiful face was alive with the excitement and admiration which some women feel for success.

“Good-bye,” she said, and her voice thrilled with a note of pride as well as sympathy, “good-bye—and thank you! Thank you, for telling me. I am proud that you should have thought it worth while to tell me. I need not say that I am proud that you have accomplished it—I always knew you would! All the same”—she offered him her hand, and her voice dropped half a tone softer—“I’m glad.”

He took the hand, his unusually sensitive and telepathetic fingers gripping hers closely. She did not resent it, she was moved out of herself by what he had that evening told her.

“I may come on Saturday and tell you what they say?” he asked.

She nodded. “I shall be very impatient till then. I only hope they will treat you well, what I call well; I have bigger ideas than you, you know. When you give me leave to speak, I think I shall see if I cannot influence them. A woman can help sometimes.”

“Sometimes?” Their eyes met, and for the moment she had the feeling, perhaps he had too, that she had been half the inspiration of his work, or at least that her sympathy and interest had helped through the hardest places.

Carson broke in here. “You off, Annarly?” he said, quite unconscious of any thing he might be interrupting, and went on to speak of the state of the roads and the peculiarities of Annarly’s car.

“Who’s that chap?” Dawling, one of the men by the fire, asked, when he had gone.

“Annarly?” Carson said; “oh, he’s at Galhardy’s.”

Most of those present were that in a sense, or at least had some interest or nominal connection with the great foundries; one of the great foundries of Europe which, a town in itself, lay not far distant and was of more vital interest to the surrounding country than the British Constitution or any other human institution. Dawling himself had little interest in it, but, from intimate conversation with those who had, most of the more important names were familiar to him; Annarly’s he could not place among them: also, though not very acute, he had a vague consciousness that the man was not one of themselves.

“What is he?” he asked, “I don’t seem to have heard of him.”

“That’s because you’ve been out of England the last three years,” Brett, a smallish man in the corner, said. “Had you been here, you’d have known—from his own demonstration, if nothing else—that he is the greatest genius of modern times. I don’t quite know what one should call him: engineer, mathematician, electrician, mechanic, or Jack-of-all-trades, but it’s quite certain he’s a marvel.”

The sarcasm of the tone was so obvious that it was easy to see Brett, secretary to the board and private secretary to the chairman of directors of Galhardy’s, did not love this talented acquisition of the great firm. Even the unobservant Dawling saw that, and Lady Sibyl, who had gone to a bureau at the far end of the room, caught the intonation though not the words. She closed the bureau and came to the group by the fire.

“Are you talking of Mr. Annarly?” she said. “He is an extraordinary person, extraordinarily clever; much, much more able, I think, than any of you yet realise.”

She stood looking down at the blaze a moment, her eyes reflecting the flickering lights, and a thoughtful smile curving her lips.

Her husband grunted; he was not in the least jealous, it never occurred to him to be jealous of any poet, musician, scientist, or other man of brains with whom his wife chose to beguile her otherwise tedious intellectual solitude. It certainly did not occur to him to be jealous of Annarly. Though he was quite unlike all who had gone before him in favour, and was also possessed of tangible abilities which Carson himself could value, if not understand, he was no more one of themselves than the others were; no more one in ordinary life, the life of the house and the coverts, and so on.

Brett, from beyond his host, moved a little impatiently. “I am afraid you are too generous, Lady Sibyl,” he said. “I don’t think you’ll find it wise to accept Annarly entirely on his own valuation.”

“I don’t,” she answered, “I estimate him a great deal higher than that. Oh”—as she saw Brett’s expression—“I know some people think him conceited, but he is not. It is true he can do and understand things few others can, and he knows it; but he does not think highly of himself on that account—though perhaps rather poorly of those who can’t. That, with his way of refusing to comply with old ways that he sees no use for, might make him unpopular. But he does not overestimate his own ability; I think you will say that yourself soon.”

“I may,” Brett conceded, but his tone did not suggest conviction.

“He’s all right,” Carson said carelessly; “a bit short of the sense of proportion, thinks nothing on earth matters but his own job, and don’t always see straight about that, otherwise not bad.”

“Isn’t he?” said Brett, with a vindictive flicker of the eyelids. But he said it quietly, and as Lady Sibyl was then saying good night, no one paid any particular attention.

When she had gone Dawling observed, “The genius seems to know something about the gentle art of making enemies.”

“Annarly?” Carson said. “He’s all right, a bit big for his boots, but a clever devil.”

“How did he get in?”

It was a question of some interest; to get into Galhardy’s, with any prospect of achieving a position or income worth the having, was a more than difficult thing unless one were born to it, or acquired it by great influence, income, or marriage. It was quite evident from the attitude of all present that Annarly had not done it in any of these ways. Brett answered now, and his tone was sarcastic.

“By merit,” he said; “he got in by his own merit and singular genius some three years ago, and by that alone has risen to what he is. And contrived to get more rope, more power, and more money to fool with than any other man, though he might be ten years his senior and the nephew of a director. He is the pet of half the board—a pretty expensive pet, I should be sorry to say what he and his experiments have cost the firm—and the bane of the other half, and most other men in authority too.”

“H’m,” Dawling said; then asked, “Who put him in in the first instance?”

“It’s reported,” Carson answered, “that some woman brought him to the notice of one of the directors, old Joe, in fact, wasn’t it? At all events, he always says now that he found him himself, was struck of a heap by some invention he submitted, or something. Anyway, he was found, and found, or thought to be, the man for the aerial torpedo problem.”

“Is that his line?” Dawling asked, interested.

“That’s it. Not but what he’s reported to do plenty else beside—weaned on ballistics, I believe, and knows all that’s worth knowing about steel and guns—though he can’t hit a bunny at twenty yards. But it’s the torpedo business that he depends on; the directors expect him not only to perfect the means of discharging torpedoes at airships, but also to give them a suitable torpedo-head too. They’ve been expecting it some time, and he keeps ’em expecting; he’s a clever chap.”

“Krupps also expect it of him,” Lee-Brendon, an older man who had not heretofore spoken, observed. “So, I believe, do the other great firms.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean there’s nothing in it,” Carson explained, “he’ll get it all right, not much doubt about that; our directors don’t make mistakes where their own interests are concerned. They must have pretty good grounds for their faith in Annarly to let him have his head as they do. Not the least clever thing about him is that he’s been able to get it; ’tisn’t every man with no more than brains to back him, who could: I admire the chap for that, though it has made him, as I say, a bit big for his boots.”

He knocked the ashes out of his pipe as he spoke, as a signal that he at least was ready for bed.

* * * * *

And Michael Annarly?

He drove home through the soft darkness of a late September night, thinking no more of the night than of the car he drove (and could not really afford). Neither was he, and this was rarer with him, thinking of the difficulties of his work and the jealousies and obstacles which met, and must meet and often thwart, a brilliant young outsider in an old, close preserve. To-night he was not thinking of them or of ways to deal with, dodge, or surmount them; he was done with that now, clear of them, free of them and the need to consider them. He was thinking of a woman whose gown repeated the russet of the bracken-clad hills at this season of the year, and whose eyes, a tone darker, looked glowingly into his when she had bade him come again, and said she would be impatient till his coming. A woman whose voice had quivered with enthusiasm and given the commendation to be coveted when he had brought her, first of all people, word of the completion of his achievement. Through all his pulses ran the thrill of victory; not over her, though perhaps he believed in a tenderness for himself, but over fate and circumstances. She and her glowing sympathy were but as a crown set on the other achievement; but one that, for the first time, made him realise that it was victory. Before it was work—good work—not perfect to his ideal standard, but good, what he had looked to do and believed, although he as no other knew the enormous difficulties, that he would do. But it was no more than that till her kindling eyes and thrilling voice had shown it as victory. No longer only a sober, if important achievement of great mechanical skill and mathematical ability; no longer even an overcoming of obstacles, an outwitting of enemies, and surmounting of difficulties, but Success, Victory, the rare, heady thing.

That night was a memorable one for Michael Annarly. Some at least are allowed one such. A night when there is little looking before or after, little consciousness of any but the moment, no formed consciousness of that, only a living it in every nerve and every fibre to the very full. The Zenith, though a man at the time does not know it—knows nothing but he is he, and the world, all that is not he, is his for the grasping. Divine delusion which comes near to fulfilling itself by the strength of its conviction! Divine moment when the long fight is almost won and victory, showing clear, is upon the threshold, and the Fates, won as women by success, offer to add other gifts—all other gifts, everything, the whole world to be had for the asking! Divine arrogance when a man, realising himself a self-existing unit and feeling his power, approaches to the Divinity! A moment such as that in which Nebuchadnezzar, struck with the sudden realisation of his own ability and the greatness to which it had achieved, cried, “Behold this great Babylon which I have builded!”

* * * * *

It was late by the time Michael Annarly reached his rooms; by then he was thinking quite soberly of the immediate future and of the directors of Galhardy’s, before whom he should put the final designs for the aerial torpedo. They knew it was completed, he himself had told them so in answer to the last of their many inquiries; not set out clear and in the superfine form presented to boards, but all there, all the real work done. It was a great admission for him, the first time in all the while he had worked at the problem, that he owned himself satisfied; the directors, well aware that his standard would not be below theirs, were dignifiedly excited. They requested that he would have the final designs ready to put before them at the next board meeting. He had undertaken to do so, not omitting to mention that it would be as much as he could do to be ready, although he had all the notes, statistics, and details of experiments collected and on the way to be reduced to order.

It is possible, had he not himself felt some youthful impatience to demonstrate what he had done, they might have had to wait longer for the result. He was young enough to have enjoyed inventing some fictitious reason for delay, by way of reprisal for what he had suffered in the past from their impatience and from various of their methods and those that obtained in the great firm. Other men might think he enjoyed a most unusual, unwise, and unprecedented liberty of action in Galhardy’s; he himself held no such opinion. He had rebelled much against what he considered the lack of it, and against the red-tape which ruled here only less than in a great Government department. The work had been done in half the time, so he told Lady Sibyl more than once, had they given him a definite sum of money, the control of a certain number of men, and the power to get what he wanted made in other parts of the foundry, and asked no questions and received no reports till all was finished.

They had, not unnaturally, done no such thing, though by degrees they allowed him more freedom than had ever been given before. With the result that, with doubt and hesitation on their part, and fretting against obstacles and going round them on his, he had worked at a pace never before approached in Galhardy’s; making many enemies among superiors, many admirers among inferiors, entirely unconscious of both; turning out the most astonishing quantity of work, although privately holding that he was terribly wasting his time. There had been other aerial torpedoes, and other torpedo-heads of his designing before this last one, which was to combine the excellencies of all others. Before now the directors would have been satisfied with the results that he could have put before them. One of the manifestations of their impatience to which he most objected was that which made them ready to be satisfied with a good deal less than perfection in their anxiety to be first in solving the world’s new problem of warfare. They aimed at making money, as they would by being first; he aimed at perfection of work and, where work was concerned, was arrogantly contemptuous of their aims; so far it was he who had carried the day. But all that was over now, the work was complete. That evening he had told Lady Sibyl about it, and received her sympathy and applause; shortly it would be formally put before the directors, and thereafter would come other, more prosaic though possibly more tangible, applause.

He was rather late leaving his rooms the next morning. Said rooms were situated on the outskirts of the town which, though it bears another geographical name on the map, might really be called Galhardy’s. Living in that part of the town was disproportionately expensive; men of a certain standing, younger sons of good families and protégés of the directors put into the great firm, had their rooms there; as they were of one class (often of one family) and that a class which is expected to pay disproportionately—and not look at the change—prices ranged high. Annarly was not of that class, and his original instinct, inherited from respectable, but by no means wealthy, city people, was not to pay outrageously for what was not worth it, and to look at the change. Nevertheless, he lived in the approved precincts and paid the demanded price with the best grace; he reckoned he got something for it—he was counted in as one of the others.

When he left his rooms that morning, the other men, though not all strikingly punctual, were already gone about what they were pleased to call their work. It was decidedly late, but he had not felt inclined to get up; he had hardly slept at all till after other people were well astir. He often did not at that time; the fury with which he habitually worked, taken in conjunction with the nervous fret of much of his present life, was beginning to tell on him. A man cannot work ceaselessly at advanced brain-work all day and wear himself to pieces all night rebelling against the impediments in his path and devising ways of surmounting them, without having to pay for it. The moment of victory and cessation is liable to be the one when Nature begins to think of sending in her bill.

Not that it mattered Annarly being late; no one concerned with time-keeping at Galhardy’s would have ventured to comment on the fact at this stage of his career, whatever might have been the inclination earlier. With no more than a careless nod to those he chanced to meet, he walked into his own room. He had his own room now, and had had it some time; he said he could do double the work if he were secured solitude and freedom from interruption. It had taken six months’ persistent argument, application, and persuasion to win the concession; no one of his standing in the firm had had it before; but in the end it was won—with the ill-will of several, and he did double the work and was satisfied. To-day, when he went in, he found several letters and papers waiting for him; there was only one of interest, a little note from Lady Sibyl; a few words of rejoicing in the success, rather warmer and more unguarded than those spoken last night. It had been written almost directly after he had left, while the glow of enthusiasm was still on her. More than once before, after they had spent an evening together, he had received such a note from her, one which, as it were, carried on the talk just a point further, and said just a little more than she herself ventured to say. Not of matters of heart; rather those intimacies of soul and mind and the confidences of sympathy and sentiment which give the fascination to friendship between men and women, and sometimes land it elsewhere. Annarly had the letters, some half dozen of them. He meant to destroy them, not that there was anything incriminating in them, but they seemed to him too delicately private to be fairly kept. As yet he had not done so; he had the writer’s permission to keep them till the end of the year, on the condition that all were burnt then.

For a minute or two he looked over some of the past ones, standing by the fire to do it. He sometimes, as to-day, wasted nearly half an hour before he began work, and some of his compeers in the great firm knew it. It is true he usually worked one, two, or three hours after they left off, frequently forgot the existence of lunch, and always did in a day three times as much as they could at the best. In a vague way some of them knew that too, but the half hour in the morning made more impression. At length, however, he put the letters away; he had the not uncommon habit of keeping private papers among business ones, though in this case they, in a long envelope, were put in a drawer by themselves. Or, rather, with no other company than the pistol he had taken to carrying last winter, when he was working late and coming home by lonely ways at a time that he had been threatened by some workmen whose dismissal he had procured for incompetency.

The letters locked up, he set seriously to work.

He had not been at it much more than half an hour, and had not got beyond the stage of finding it acutely distasteful and being fully persuaded that he was physically and mentally incapable of doing it, when an interruption occurred. He looked round impatiently: in spite of his conviction that he did not want to work, he did not herald the momentary respite with pleasure. The impatience was considerably mixed with surprise when the boy who had knocked announced, “Sir James Shannon.”

Sir James was one of the younger directors, a very rich, a very able and, in private life, a haughtily exclusive man. He was the one of the whole body most inimical to Annarly; indeed, it was only his clear perception of the importance of keeping abilities which rival firms were only too ready to buy which prevented him from open condemnation of the man and all his works. That Sir James should come thus was unprecedented; he had no social dealings with him, and, unlike some other of the directors, never asked for unofficial (and unremunerated) opinions on scientific or technical matters in which he was interested. Any other reason for his coming was difficult to imagine; Annarly was at a loss to understand it. The reason why Brett, secretary to the board, should accompany him was equally difficult to guess. Something warned him that it was not favourable, and instinctively he received the visitor with a little less deference and a little more assurance than he usually kept for this one of the directors.

The reception was not without effect; Sir James, who had ignored the greeting on entering and shown a very marked and considerable distance of manner, altered a little.

“Mr. Annarly,” he said coldly, but with courtesy, “I regret that a very unpleasant business brings me here this morning. There are some questions I am compelled to put to you; I must ask you to answer them fully and plainly.”

“If I can,” Annarly said, and swiftly reviewed the different matters which, from time to time, he had not communicated to the directors. And again instinct and Brett’s hardly veiled satisfaction warned him that the thing was serious.

He pushed forward a wide-seated chair and invited Sir James to be seated, more as if he were receiving a friend at home than as if he were face to face with a difficult situation.

Sir James sat, but it was his only concession. Brett, ignored, and resenting it, took a small chair beyond his chief and watched silently.

“It has come to the knowledge of the directors,” Sir James began, “that you have recently entered into negotiations with certain foreign firms for the sale to them of inventions worked out here, and consequently the property of this firm.”

Annarly lifted his head quickly. “Seeing that the directors——” he began.

“Precisely,” Sir James interrupted, “seeing that the directors, contrary to the opinion of at least some, were persuaded to agree to allow you such powers—the power to sell foreign rights in some one or two of the inventions worked out by you for which the firm had no use—subject to certain conditions.”

“—The condition that I should have designed a satisfactory torpedo and torpedo-head for aerial warfare. I have done so. You know it, everyone knows it. There hasn’t been a full report yet, I know, but it is done—it is here.” He indicated the desk with a sweep of the hand. “You all know that. Surely, even if I had been a little previous——”

“A little previous?” Sir James’s tone was scathing. “You consider you have been that?”

“Perhaps—yes,” Annarly admitted.

“Ah? I may understand, then, that you admit to the negotiations?”

“I admit that, when an opportunity occurred, I let certain people know that I might have something to offer them by and by. It was previous, as I have said; I should not have sought the opportunity, but, since it offered, I took it, though, strictly speaking, I suppose I ought not. But I have told them nothing, given them nothing, and received from them nothing.”

“I trust,” Sir James said coldly, “that may prove to be the case. But even if it does, and I hope for your sake it may, though you are cleared of the felonious act, you are not, and cannot, by your own confession, be cleared of the intent.”

“The intent?”

“Certainly, the intent. Really, Mr. Annarly, your attitude in the circumstances is impertinent! You must be perfectly well aware that you have transgressed, not only the first rule of the firm and all other firms, but also one of the first rules of honour. You have no right to open these negotiations now or at any other time; you have not and never will have anything to dispose of—honestly.”

“What do you mean?” Annarly asked sharply. “I fear I don’t understand you.”

Sir James grew impatient. “Have you forgotten,” he said, “that when these unprecedented and, in my opinion, highly improper concessions were discussed, Sir Joseph Harte, the chairman, was not present at the board meeting? And that it was finally agreed to grant them to you only subject to his concurrence?”

“Certainly,” Annarly answered, “I never forgot that for a moment; in fact, I went to see Sir Joseph on the subject as soon after the board meeting as he was well enough to see me. I put the matter before him then and there. I had spoken of it before to him, as to most of you—and he raised no further objection, indeed, gave a full consent. Afterwards I had a letter from him confirming the talk.”

He handed a letter to Sir James. “Brett wrote it,” he said, with a glance which, for the first time, included the secretary in the conversation—“he could have told you what was in it.”

Sir James took the letter, but did not read it. “Yes,” he said, and the frigidity of his manner was unmistakable, “Mr. Brett did write it, and, in Sir Joseph’s then indisposed condition, signed it.”

Annarly looked up, a sudden fear flashing across him—such a letter, so signed, could and might be repudiated. But the thought found no utterance, it was too gross.

“Mr. Brett is here now,” Sir James said, “and so can tell you, though I should think it hardly necessary, that he made a very serious mistake in that letter.”

“A mistake?” Annarly’s voice sank just a little and his assurance for the first time wavered. The feeling began to come upon him that he was fighting; not answering charges or facing a difficult situation, but fighting a deadly and unrecognisable enemy, and with tied hands. Brett was not the enemy exactly, he was an instrument, a manifestation only; a willing instrument and a venomous manifestation, but insignificant without the power behind. Shannon was not it exactly; he was coldly antipathetic and coldly and contemptuously angry; but he was not the enemy, only a part, perhaps an impersonal part, of a great and relentless power. He drew a slow breath, and his eyes narrowed as some men’s do when they fight, but he moistened his lips ever so little; he was afraid.

“Well?” he said to Brett curtly, and without any pretence of politeness.

“I made a mistake in that letter,” Brett answered. “Sir Joseph was not at all well when he dictated the letters that day; a pretty sharp attack of pain came on before he had finished; in fact, while he was dictating that one, which was the last. I had some difficulty in making out quite what he meant once or twice, and I entirely mistook what he intended to convey in that letter.”

“Ah?” Annarly said quietly, and then, “What did he intend to convey?”

“That, on thinking over his recent conversation with you, he felt he could not give consent to your request without further consideration and discussion with his co-directors.”

“Ah?” Annarly said again, and again he said it quietly, though this information and reversion of the chairman’s consent meant, not only the loss of the concession for which he had fought so hard and reckoned of such great value, but also some justification for Sir James’s attitude and charges.

He turned to Sir James, ignoring the secretary.

“It is certainly unfortunate, sir,” he said, “that Mr. Brett should make such mistakes. Still, I can hardly imagine the directors will hold me guilty on account of Mr. Brett and his mistakes.”

Brett flushed. “I rectified it the next day,” he said.

“What!” Annarly’s tone was nearly an insult.

“I rectified it,” Brett maintained, wincing a little. “Sir Joseph asked me about it the next day, he knows that when he is in pain he does not always make himself clear; he thought I might have made a mistake in some of the letters, so he asked me, and when I told him what I had said to you he told me to write at once and contradict it.”

“And you did?”

“Yes, I did.”

“You liar!”

Brett sprang to his feet, his face very white.

Sir James interrupted quickly. “Mr. Annarly, you forget yourself!” he said.

Annarly turned. “Yes,” he said, with his back to Brett, “I do; I beg your pardon, Sir James.”

Sir James frowned, Annarly’s attitude was not helpful. “You forget,” he said with hauteur, “that it is Sir Joseph’s word we have for the mistake and correction. Mr. Brett merely acted upon instructions in the second letter and misunderstanding in the first.”

“I received no second letter,” Annarly said; but the feeling of the tied hands and the vast proportions of the unrecognised foe were growing upon him.

“That is unfortunate,” Sir James said coldly.

“You don’t believe me?”

“I should wish to be able to do so, but in the circumstances I fear I must suspend judgment. And in the circumstances, and seeing the very grave nature of the case, I must, on behalf of the directors, ask for your papers.”

“My papers?”

“Yes, your papers; all papers here.”

“The notes on the torpedo? The statistics and tables? Does the board not want them reported upon?”

“The board will not trouble you to report upon them; indeed, it is the desire of the directors that you will consider you have leave of absence until the matter is settled. They desire that you will neither come here nor hold communication with persons coming here, pending that time. Mr. Brett, kindly collect the papers.”

He turned away as he spoke; he had risen and stood with his shoulder towards Annarly, as if the matter concerned him no longer. Brett rose too, and went, with hardly concealed alacrity, to the desk.

But Annarly did not move; he understood at last, and the understanding struck him speechless; he sat staring as one half stunned, even now hardly able to believe the incredible.

The foe was declared now, and it was the whole board of directors, the whole personnel of Galhardy’s, the very shareholders, the vested interest, the unaltering custom, the relentless, omnivorous power of a great firm against which he, in his arrogance, had pitted his puny strength. The recognition was overwhelming—none the less so because it came when victory was so nearly assured, and when nerves and brain and mind, worn to the finest by past work, were strung to breaking. The shock was stunning; for a little he could neither feel nor think, but sat motionless, watching with incurious eyes Brett systematically ransacking the desk.

Neatly the papers were collected: letters, diagrams, notes, long table of figures, all the record of the now completed work, and other varied and only less splendid work which had gone before. One by one, as they were taken out, he recognised them, and the recognition brought a faint, inarticulate pain. They were very much to him; more, far more, than anyone knew, more than he himself could have told; they were, as it were, part of him, his very life. As Brett took them from their familiar places—from his presence altogether—it was as if part of himself went; something he could never recover. The directors took more than they knew when they took these; so much that, in his present state, it came so near to seeming all as to be dangerous.

A drawer-handle jerked sharply, the drawer, securely locked, refused to open. “The key of this?” Brett said in a businesslike tone.

Annarly looked up.

All the drawers and pigeon-holes of the desk were empty now, excepting this last, which was locked with a separate key. He glanced towards it dully, trying to remember where the key was, and what the drawer contained. For a moment he could not; then both recurred to him together: the key was on the floor where it had fallen just before the interruption occurred, the drawer contained Lady Sibyl’s letters. Both things seemed curiously remote and far away, as if they had to do with another person in another life, singularly trivial.

“The key?” Brett spoke impatiently, and held his hand for it.

Annarly roused himself. “There are none but private letters in that drawer,” he said, without moving.

“It does not matter what they are, I must have them.”

Brett spoke authoritatively, perhaps a little intoxicated with the position.

“You?” Annarly inquired contemptuously.

Sir James interposed. “We must have the key, Mr. Annarly,” he said. “Do not make this unpleasant business more unpleasant by foolish and perfectly useless resistance to authority. All papers here are the property of the firm, as you know; you have neither legal nor moral right to withhold them when they are demanded.”

“The papers in that drawer are private letters,” Annarly repeated. His stunned faculties were beginning to stir a little—he was of that sort which, in animals, is by far the most dangerous after being left to all seeming dead. “Nothing there is written on the firm’s paper, or with the firm’s ink, which, I believe, constitutes the basis of the legal claim; nor is it about the firm’s concerns, which, I suppose, you would say constitutes a moral one. They are private letters only; you have no right to them.”

“In that case they will be returned to you so soon as we are satisfied on the point. Unfasten the drawer, please. Remember, to force it offers little difficulty; it is merely for your own sake that I ask for the key.”

Annarly hesitated a moment, or seemed to, then he rose, found the key, and went to the desk.

Brett moved back in obedience to a nod from his chief, who was not quite sure that Annarly would deliver up the letters to the subordinate. Both, thus, were close together to the left of the desk, while Annarly, the drawer being in the extreme right, was that side, the side which was towards the fire.

He unlocked the drawer and took out the letters, shaking them out of the covering envelope, which fell empty to the floor, so that it was seen they were what he had said.

“You see,” he said, “they are letters”—he told them over counting them, then turned to the drawer, as if to feel for more—“only letters——”

“Yes,” Sir James said impatiently, “they will be returned to you as soon as we are assured——”

“Oh, no, they won’t,” Annarly said, and his tone was quiet and confident. “They will never be returned to me by you, for you’ll be dead before you get them.”

He swung round as he spoke, and Sir James found himself looking down the barrel of a revolver.

He stepped back a pace: he was not a coward, but the thing was unexpected and unpleasantly close. Brett stepped back too; he was very near his chief, and, owing to the giving back and the position of the furniture, quite unable to move away.

“Don’t be a fool, Annarly!” Sir James said sharply. “Put that down. You’ll gain nothing by such folly.”

“Nor lose anything, either,” Annarly answered; “I’ve already done that; I’ve not much more to lose.”

And therein, if it were true, lay the danger, and Sir James knew it. For a second or two he did not move, nor did Annarly; they looked at one another, seeing not much but the revolver between.

“I don’t want to make a scene,” Sir James said. “I have done what I can to spare your feelings and avoid publicity, but if you compel me to it, I shall have to have recourse to personal violence—we are two to one, I may point out, and there are men within call.”

“Call them,” Annarly answered. “Though it will hardly be necessary, the report should do it. I shall have time to get in two shots, one for you and one for me, between the calling and the coming, and before Mr. Brett becomes very violent.”

Brett’s white face reddened faintly; but if he had any thought of retaliation the big bulk of his chief effectually prevented. Sir James was no fool; he recognised the seriousness of the situation, and he was not likely to allow matters to be fatally precipitated by Brett.

“You are hopelessly blackening yourself by this folly,” he warned Annarly. “What is the object of it?”

Annarly looked grim. “Is there any blackening left for me to do?” he asked. “The object? The letters. They are private letters, I have said it, in no way concerning the firm; I’ll burn them, if you like you can see them burnt, but I will not give them up.”

For an almost imperceptible second Sir James hesitated, then he said, “Do you swear that those are private letters and nothing but private letters, in no way concerned with the foreign negotiations, or anything connected with them? On your honour, you swear it?”

“On my honour.”

“Burn them.”

They were thrown in the fire. But though Annarly had magnanimously forborne to put the interrogative stress the situation warranted on promising on his honour, he did not magnanimously lower the revolver. He might trust Sir James, but he did not trust Brett; so while the flames caught the papers no one of the three moved. Indeed, it is doubtful if any one of them watched the burning of Lady Sibyl’s sympathetic and emotional words, in themselves a matter of curiously little real moment to all. It was only by the increasing and dwindling of the light that the destruction was observed.

When the flames had died down, Annarly’s arm dropped; he turned away as if vitality had suddenly gone out of him. Sir James moved towards the door; Brett, carrying the confiscated papers, followed, eyeing the pistol.

“It’s not loaded,” Annarly roused himself to say, and threw it on the empty desk.

For half a second Sir James paused, a flush coming under his skin; then he went out, and Brett went with him. Annarly was left alone.