Chapter XVI

Certain of the directors of Galhardy’s were met in Sir Joseph Harte’s library. It was only an informal assembly after dinner, but, as there were none but directors present, the affairs of the firm were naturally the topic of conversation. The more so since at this time there were affairs of some importance and anxiety to be discussed. There was word abroad of an aerial torpedo perfected in Germany. The news was well about now, most of the halfpenny papers had had leading articles on it, and some of the smaller scientific journals had given suggestions, if not statements, of its form, mechanism, and the filling of the heads. By this time its existence was known to the man in the street and to all the other people whom it did not concern. The directors of Galhardy’s, whom it did concern, had naturally known of it some while ago; by now they possessed considerably more knowledge, and possessed it with some certainty.

“It is similar, but by no means identical, with ours,” Casterman, the scientific member of the board, said.

“With Annarly’s?” somebody inquired, and Casterman nodded.

Theirs was Annarly’s; that is, it was the one he had finally worked out for them and left, when he left, in a state which admitted of no mistake in the production. At least so he had thought; but as he had left more than a year, and as yet they had produced no aerial torpedo, it would seem they had found it otherwise. One of the directors suggested, rather sarcastically, that it was a pity they had not been so rapid and successful in mastering the details of their own torpedo as they had been in learning those of the German one which had forestalled them.

“I don’t see that is a point of importance now,” Sir James Shannon said. “The important question, to my mind, is to decide how far Annarly is concerned in this German one.”

“How does it help us, if we do?” the objector asked. “It won’t give us priority, nor any very great benefit that I see, even if we can and do prosecute Annarly.”

“Prosecution, I always held, ought to have taken place before,” Shannon said. “Seeing what has now occurred others will probably agree with me now.”

He spoke with severity; but it was no more than he felt, a man of rigorous code and unimpeachable integrity, he had always held that honour, as well as justice, demanded the pushing home of the charge against Michael Annarly. He believed him guilty of a grave offence—the directors to this day were divided as to the gravity and extent of the offence. Shannon believed the worst, and had always considered that, in justice to the shareholders and the trust reposed in the directors, the full legal penalties should have been exacted. Sir Joseph Harte, who, perhaps better than any, knew the ins and outs of the case, had inclined to a milder course; he spoke now with his usual suavity.

“We have no proof that Annarly is concerned in this German torpedo,” he said; “indeed, everything goes to show the contrary. As you know, I have had the most exhaustive inquiries made, and there is nothing whatever to connect him with it, nothing of any sort against him. You have seen the earlier reports of our agents; I have the final one here: it is the same, they find no trace of suspicion against him in the matter.”

He selected a paper from those before him, and handed it to Shannon, who read it and passed it on. It told what previous reports, read at board meetings and discussed there or in private afterwards, had told—that the able detectives employed had discovered nothing to connect Michael Annarly with the German torpedo; nothing whatever of a suspicious nature about him or any of his doings. It was a very full report, a full and minute record of Michael’s doings, comings and goings since he left Galhardy’s; neither time, trouble, nor expense had been spared, and more had been discovered about his daily life, even the most trivial details of it, than he himself would have believed possible. The record read humble enough: an uneventful, lower, middle-class life, a harmless, monotonous existence at the furniture warehouse in Soho, punctuated very occasionally by attendance at some scientific society’s meeting, or, more occasionally still, by a rare journey on some consulting work, or on business for the furniture man. There were no friends, suspicious or otherwise, to chronicle; no social engagements, unless one could so call periodic visits to Hurstbury. Even during the short time spent on the Clyde, a time very closely inquired into, there were none. Indeed, the single incident of any interest in the time under investigation was the accident at the power station, and that was so only as being characteristic of the man as Galhardy’s knew him, not because there was anything suspicious in it. Annarly had chanced to be there when the accident happened, and had dealt with the situation, that was all. He had lately gone back again to the same district, but to work with a small warp dyer, an even more unimportant person than himself, in no way connected with big ventures, not even an engineer at all. If ever a man had dropped out, Michael Annarly, by the showing of really able detectives, was that one. Everything about him was merely negative: he had no friends, no letters to speak of, no communication with the outside world except one or two purely business or family ones, and those such as could be fully investigated, and were demonstrated perfectly harmless and commonplace. He would even seem to have no intimates among his own people, unless a cousin, Nan Barmister, listed among the inmates of the Soho house, could be regarded as such.

“Who and what is she?” someone queried, perhaps with a hazy recollection of _cherchez la femme_.

“Nothing,” Sir Joseph answered, “that has been looked into. I have a report here, but it is hardly worth your reading; she is entirely unimportant; she need not be considered in the matter.”

He was a wise man, a very wise, some said a very wily; he had lived a long time and seen a great deal, and he fully realised the part women play in the affairs of men, even sometimes those that do not touch them. But he made the mistake of overlooking—as may be safely overlooked nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of every thousand—the insignificant woman. The women men love or sin for, whom they hate or serve or worship, who are beautiful or brilliant or clever or detestable—something at least that for a moment impresses, are reckoned with by an old and able man, even when he feels none of the glamour himself. But the insignificant and plain woman, the mere mouse who slips by, filling her allotted place, doing her allotted work, noticed by no one, hardly seen and never remembered—even the wisest man reckons her of no account and may usually safely so reckon. If Sir Joseph made a mistake in his reckoning now one cannot blame him, this woman’s importance was so indirect, so difficult to realise or appreciate, that it was impossible to guard against, impossible for him to be really aware of even in the end.

This evening her name was dismissed without further comment, the report of her uneventful life, so far as it had been learned by the detectives, hardly glanced at by the men who turned again to that of Michael.

“Doesn’t sound like Annarly,” someone remarked.

“That’s precisely what it does to me,” Casterman said. “He’s so damned clever.”

“You don’t believe it?”

“I believe it so far as it goes. I also believe that no one will go any farther. But as for there being no farther to go, that hardly strikes me as likely.”

This opinion was held by some others; they could not reconcile the report with the man they had known, nor accept it as a complete account of his present life. They had no real idea of his unimportance apart from his great mental ability, no idea of the wreck, almost annihilation, they had themselves produced for him. Realising his ability, surmising his resentment, they suspected him of being a dangerous person, and they found it hard to believe that this record of an entirely unimportant humble life was the full, true, and whole account of his doings. As to whether or no he had a share in the German aerial torpedo was another matter; there was no proof of it, nothing suspicious even that anyone could hear of, and there should have been something if he had played any part. Also, of course, they were not quite sure of the construction and constitution of the torpedo and its resemblance to their own; information on such matters, obtained the way theirs had to be, is not always reliable. In the end they inclined to exonerate Annarly from suspicion; it seemed really impossible, whatever his inclinations, that he should have been able to enter into any negotiations unknown to them or their agents. Convinced of this they dropped the subject and fell to discussing one more important at the present time, the coming trial of their own torpedo.

This, the first great trial, was timed to take place within a few days. After months of patient work, wading through papers, going over notes and diagrams, and reconstructing experiments, they had, they believed, mastered the details of the design left them. The original intention had been to produce the perfected torpedo in the spring, but the unexpected appearance of the German one altered their plans. The German torpedo was a considerable blow to them; priority was a thing they had aimed at, and, in spite of this year’s delay, expected to have. To be forestalled by a few months was extremely bitter. But so it was, and nothing could alter it; there was nothing for them to do but push on the work with all speed and produce their torpedo as little after the rival nation as might be. With such success had this been done that the first trial of the finished and perfected thing was arranged to take place on the following Wednesday morning. And on its successful issue much depended, not only money, but reputation too, and, incidentally, though this was a small thing beside such important issues, justification of the summary dismissal of Michael Annarly.

* * * * *

Late on Wednesday afternoon some of the directors met in Sir Joseph’s private room at the foundries. One or two showed traces of some disorder, Casterman’s hair was badly singed, and the smell of smoke clung about several of them although visible traces had been washed away. The faces of all were very grave. Brett, sitting inconspicuously at a desk in the corner, looked pinched and white: he was not a man who could identify himself with large interests in which he was not concerned; he was not personally concerned in the events of that day, but he was subdued and shocked; he had been rather badly frightened, for a minute or two at least he had been too close to sudden death, in an ugly noisy form, to quickly recover from it.

The long-promised aerial torpedo had failed, and failed signally. It, after behaving on the whole satisfactorily in preliminary and flight trials, had, on this first great and complete test, failed signally. And in doing so, had blown half a dozen men to unrecognisable fragments and caused destruction unparalleled in the history of torpedoes.

It is one thing to make trial of new torpedoes in the water, where the dangerous consequences of failure and accident are to a large extent nullified by the medium in which they are made. It is quite another to hold trials in the air: a lack of control, a fault in the sighting, a miscalculation in the curve of projection, or a determination on the part of the projectile to take the earth at once and drop vertically regardless of where, is liable to be attended with great disaster. The Galhardy torpedo had thus disastrously failed.

The reason why had already been discussed plentifully; all the experts in the works had talked of it, and were talking of it, all the workmen too. The directors and important persons had touched on it as they travelled back from the open country where the trial had been made. The Home Office officials, no doubt, would discuss it, probably _ad nauseam_, when they came to hold an inquiry—as, no doubt, they would since one cannot kill six workmen with a new explosive and a new arm without someone wanting to know how and why. Now, in Sir Joseph’s room, those assembled were not discussing the reason of the failure, though the knowledge that others did and would no doubt lent additional gravity to their already grave looks. It was of the situation they spoke, and they spoke freely.

“It seems to me the time has come for us to face matters, and own we have made a mistake.”

It was John Duncan who spoke, the oldest of the directors; a little frail old man, too old and frail and occupied to take much part in their deliberations usually, but whose voice, rarely heard, carried weight and stood for a spirit perhaps not otherwise present among them. He had been silent a long time now, listening to what others said with as much attention as Brett, and with a more open mind. Now, when he spoke, the others turned to him.

“—The mistake,” he said, “of trying to make the torpedo without the man who designed it.”

“We had all the designs,” someone objected.

“We never perfectly comprehended them,” Casterman reminded them. “I think that is generally, if not publicly, recognised now.”

Duncan did not know that, but it did not alter his contention. “I am not sure that it would have made a great difference if we had,” he said. “We had all the particulars of his steel process, I understood; but the steel turned out since he left has not been the same. No doubt Mr. Brett did his best”—Brett moved uneasily here—“and interpreted the work to the best of his ability, but the steel is not quite the earlier steel. The torpedo is a very much greater matter still. I do not suggest that Mr. Annarly took the secret with him, I am sure he did not; if you will permit me an expression which may sound superstitious, I would say rather he took the spirit.”

No one contradicted. One cannot contradict a man of such age and standing, even if he says strange things. “You surely don’t think it a mistake to have dismissed Annarly?” Sir James Shannon objected.

“I never had all the evidence before me,” the other answered. “I was, unfortunately, ill at the time, and for long after, so ill that I fear I did not trouble much with the affairs of this world. My good friend here”—he looked towards Sir Joseph—“has since said he would let me have the papers, if I cared to go into them; but somehow or other it has not occurred. We are old, and we are busy, and I fear we—at least, I—hardly give the attention I ought to things. I feel I have been remiss in the matter, and it is rather late now.”

Sir Joseph assured him he had not been remiss; it was the last accusation anyone would think of bringing against him. The question of Annarly and his dismissal was a trifle with which they had no business to allow him to be troubled; the directors, who had thoroughly gone into the matter at the time, were satisfied that they had followed the mildest possible—in fact, the only—course: he must not blame himself about it. Sir Joseph spoke in his usual pleasant way, touched with an even greater courtesy; John Duncan’s personality inspired courtesy, and his position a desire with most men to stand well with him.

He acquiesced now to the decision more than a year old. “No doubt, no doubt,” he said; “you would have decided justly, in the only possible way. The mistake, I think, we have made is in trying to keep the man’s torpedo when we had been obliged to send him away. Surely we should have done better, instead of taking up his design and trying to make it our own, to have gone further back in our work? Oh, technically his is ours, I know it, I don’t deny it—but the spirit of the thing? At least, it has turned out a failure.”

The directors could not go with him here; they submitted to the words out of deference to his age, but as men of the world and men of business they could not agree. A little later, however, Casterman made a suggestion equally, if not more, startling.

“It occurred to me some time ago,” he said, “that we might do worse than have Annarly back.”

“Annarly back!”

There was a general exclamation. Brett, at the desk, looked up quickly and observed, or thought he did, that Sir Joseph looked down.

“Yes,” Casterman said, “he’s out and away the best man we ever had, the best man in England I, personally, should say. We want him, and we want him pretty badly, there can be no two opinions about that; and considering what has gone before, we ought to be able to get him on fairly satisfactory terms.”

“No terms would be satisfactory,” Sir James Shannon pronounced. “I, for one, would never give my consent to such a thing.”

Sir Joseph’s opinion wavered, but rather tended the same way. He expressed himself far more mildly, almost deprecatingly; he allowed now, as earlier, many extenuating circumstances to the transgressor, but he could not honestly recommend his reinstating.

But Casterman stood his ground. “Let’s state the case,” he said, “briefly as you like, but without varnish; we can, we are unofficial. In plain terms, what did Annarly do? Opened negotiations with sundry people for the sale of sundry processes which he had worked out for us, and for which we had no use. Well, of course, it was wrong, illegal, if you like. But, observe, no absolute harm was done. He had not divulged anything or received any money when caught; he had not actively opened negotiations himself, merely replied to those who approached him, unwisely replied, if you like, but not feloniously. The offence, when we got wind of it, though serious, can hardly be regarded as having arrived at the heinous stage, more especially in his peculiar circumstances. You will remember, you no doubt do remember, the fight he made to induce us to concede the right of disposing of these processes. By Jove, what a fighter he was! His persistence was astounding!—He was difficult to work with, but what work! Still, that’s neither here nor there now; what I’m getting at is the question of his excuse—if there was one. His defence, you remember—he never made it in person to the full board, we never had him before us, I don’t now remember why. But you all know his defence was that he understood we had conceded the right; and, though he was aware he had a little forestalled official permission, he believed he had done nothing worse, and not transgressed our intention. It was a mistake which might have occurred, seeing how we argued over the subject; I think there were several of us who did not know what was or was not agreed to in the end.”

“Annarly knew; he had Sir Joseph’s letter cancelling any former concession,” Shannon said.

“I know,” Casterman agreed. “The real case against him largely turned on that letter, the second one, in which Sir Joseph corrected the first; wherein, by a regrettable but quite understandable mistake, permission had actually been given. That second letter, you remember, Annarly always swore he had not received.”

“I wish it were possible to trace that letter,” John Duncan said. “I know comparatively little of the case, I am afraid, but the point of the letter always troubled me. I have always felt I should much like to be able to trace that missing letter.”

Sir Joseph sympathised with the wish; it was his own, he said so now, though he feared there was little chance of its ever being fulfilled.

Casterman agreed. “I am afraid we shall never know more than that you dictated it, and that Brett wrote and posted it. There is nothing to show that Annarly did or did not receive it. But”—he turned to them generally—“even supposing he did receive it, and suppressed it, and acted in defiance of it. Well, it was wrong, of course, unscrupulous, dishonest, what you will; but—hang it all! Let’s look at the thing squarely—there was temptation, and to spare! He was young, poor, ambitious; he was dead set on that concession, he believed he had a moral right to it—that weighed with him, mind; he had some weird ideas, one must not forget that. He also thought he had won his point—most of us had at one time agreed to it, and he had had it confirmed once. To get a letter cancelling it at the last minute might well make him furious and determined, being a young fool, to have it in spite of us.”

“It is quite easy to understand how it happened,” Sir Joseph said; “I have always felt sorry for Annarly, he was in a position to which he was not really suited, somewhat beyond his strength. The temptations were too great for one of his experience.”

“He has had some more experience since then,” Casterman urged; “he’ll have learnt a thing or two by now. It would be safe enough to have him back, I believe, even if the worst alleged against him were true—and we have no conclusive proof that it is. Why not give him another chance? It would pay us; we want him badly enough.”

The suggestion thus seriously made was surprising to most of them; but, unexpected though it was, it was discussed for a while. The position was something too grave for the directors to be able to afford to dismiss, without consideration, anything which might help to improve it. The torpedo accident that day had brought home to them, as nothing else could, the loss Galhardy’s had sustained when Michael Annarly was dismissed; they did not fail to realise that his return might be of great value now. So, in spite of the unexpected nature of Casterman’s suggestion and its distastefulness to some of them, they discussed it for a considerable time. But in the end they decided against it; more were opposed to it than approved it, and they were a section which could not be won over. Shannon never swerved from his strong objection; even the influence of Duncan, who was in favour of it, did not alter him. He maintained that they had proved Annarly to be a man capable of great unscrupulousness when driven into a corner; he himself held him one not to be trusted, in any sense of the word. It was not fair, he said, to themselves, to other employees, even to the man himself, to reinstate him unless he could be fully cleared—as he never could be. There were others who held this opinion, though less strongly; and others who thought with Casterman that the uncleared, but unproved, charge against him did not matter, or at least that they would be well advised to risk the consequences of his return. Sir Joseph swayed now one way now the other, anxious to do what was benevolent to the man, but having the welfare of Galhardy’s much at heart; that welfare, it finally seemed to him, would be best served if the genius were not reinstated.

“If he could be really cleared,” he said reluctantly, as the others were going, “if only that were possible.”

“It’s impossible,” Casterman said; “if we wait for that we’ll never have him.”

“If only we could trace that letter,” John Duncan said; “that letter troubles me, so much hangs on it.”

“It does, it does,” Sir Joseph agreed, and shook him by the hand.

He went to the door with him, an honour he paid no one else, inquiring for his health, and thanking him for coming.

Brett, by the desk, watched. Watched him close the door after the last of the directors and come back towards his desk.

“That letter seems to trouble Mr. Duncan, sir,” he observed.

“Yes,” Sir Joseph answered. “A fine old man, a wonderful man still. Always a dreamer and an enthusiast.”

Brett looked down at the papers before him. “He does not seem satisfied with my steel,” he said. “Nor”—he raised his eyes a second, and the look in them if nervous was disagreeable—“nor am I.”

“Nor are you?” Sir Joseph repeated pleasantly. “I am sorry to hear that. What’s the matter? But perhaps you had better reserve it for another time; it is already late; we have a good deal to get through.”

Brett did not begin work. “I understood that I was to have commission on that steel,” he said, with another flicker of the eyelids.

“Did you?” Sir Joseph spoke affably, but absently.

“Yes—and I have received none yet.”

“Dear me. How remiss; the matter must be looked to—if you really were to receive it. I have no clear remembrance of any such arrangement; no doubt the other directors will recollect the board meeting at which it was discussed.”

“It was not discussed at a board meeting; the arrangement was privately made between you and me only; but other people know about it, some people not on the board.”

“That is indiscreet,” Sir Joseph reproved. “I am surprised that you should have talked of affairs of the firm outside. I always thought your discretion could be relied on.”

“I know you did,” Brett retorted with spite, though afterwards he coloured nervously. “I mean—I believe I am usually discreet. I do not consider I have been indiscreet now. I have said nothing that matters, only mentioned to Carson and a few friends like him that I had worked up Annarly’s steel and was to receive commission on it.”

“Ah, I see.” Sir Joseph still spoke pleasantly, but there was a look in his eyes which Brett, who knew better than most what his suave manner was worth, understood. “Do you know,” he said, and Brett was not surprised to hear him say it, “I have no recollection at all of any such arrangement being definitely made? And I hardly think my directors would quite approve it. You heard some of them to-day express an opinion that you had not improved on Annarly’s work. I doubt if they would think you were entitled to the considerable sum which we may hope the commission should amount to.”

“Oh?” Brett said. He drove his pencil into the paper before him rather unsteadily, but he kept to his point; the eyes, which he was afraid to raise, were very venomous in expression now.

“I half thought you might have forgotten, sir,” he said, “although, I think, if you look you will find it has been put on record. What made me think you might not recollect, is that I don’t recollect your dictating that letter to Annarly, that second letter.”

He raised his eyes now, and met the other’s fully. For an almost imperceptible fraction of time they looked at one another, then:

“That’s unfortunate, though hardly important,” Sir Joseph said, “since, at the time the matter came up for discussion, you gave me and others the hour at which you both wrote and posted the letter.”

“I know I did,” Brett answered; “if I remember rightly, you yourself suggested—I mean ‘reminded’ me of the exact hour.”

“Did I? It is unlike you to need reminding of such things; usually your memory is good.”

“Yours, if I may say so, sir, is not.”

Sir Joseph ignored the words; he may not have heard them, they were not very audible; he dismissed the subject curtly, as done with, saying there was nothing to be gained by discussing it further, and that work must be attended to now.

Brett took up his pen; his hands were twitching a little; he realised that he had done a dangerous thing and that he might be thankful to have come off as well as he had. But he was not thankful, he was bitterly angry and humiliated too. It had been a great effort to him, and the result had been far other than he had anticipated; he would not give in without another struggle, he would not be treated thus contemptuously, as not worth answering; he was dangerous, and Sir Joseph should at least know it.

“There are two things of which I should like to remind you, sir,” he said; “one is that on the afternoon you dictated the first letter to Annarly, you saw Mrs. Carr-Harris and also dictated a long report; the one before Annarly’s letter, the other after, and at neither time was there any symptom of pain or uncertainty as to your words—such as is alleged to have given rise to the mistake in that letter to Annarly. Indeed, I never remember to have heard you speak more clearly and definitely than when you instructed me to write and confirm the consent you had verbally given him.”

“Is that so? Then I can only recommend you to be careful to whom you mention it, as it is not to your credit; in the face of exceptional clearness, such a mistake as you made in an important letter is very remiss.”

“Mistake!”

“Certainly. Your next point? You said there were two things of which you wished to remind me; please to be quick. I am willing to bear with you so far as possible, but my patience is becoming exhausted.”

Brett swallowed; for the moment he found it a little hard to speak. Sir Joseph’s methods were something of a revelation to him, and although he had worked with him some years and knew him pretty well, they were a shock too. To his sense of rectitude as well as other things; some men’s sense of rectitude can be shocked by such revelations when they affect themselves, even though they do not realise them when they affect others.

“The other point,” he said, feeling it of small avail, “was the coming of Sir James Shannon. He came one evening after that first letter was written, and told you what representatives of those French people had said casually to him and others about their firm being very interested in Annarly, and expecting to get something good from him. He had taken fright at it, and came to you to put a stop to the whole business. There was no talk of the second letter until after that. I don’t know if you told Sir James you had already refused your consent to Annarly, you did not tell me until after he had gone.”

“Did I not?” Sir Joseph’s voice was quiet, but ominous. “I should like you to be quite sure on that point, for, so you said at the time of the inquiry, the second letter had already been dictated and posted then. Either you were not speaking the truth then, or you are not now.”

Brett flushed faintly, and shifted under the other’s eyes, “Supposing I made a mistake then?” he muttered. “Supposing I remembered now that I had been wrong about that date, and felt it my duty to—to tell people?”

“Ah? Supposing you did, if you felt it your duty. By the way, whom should you think suitable to tell?”

“There’s Annarly.”

“Annarly? Yes, just so. Have you his address? I believe he is foreman in some small works in the Midlands. Curious how he has sunk; I suppose back to his original level. Of course, your communication might interest him, though I should hardly imagine so; he would not regard it as important. I do not regard him as important either——”

“Not where he is, possibly,” Brett suggested, “but perhaps elsewhere?”

“Perhaps,” Sir Joseph agreed, “though I hardly think so. I can hardly imagine him a person of any importance anywhere again.”

And Brett felt it to be true; this suave, cool-headed old man would take care the man he had been driven by circumstances to wrong should never achieve to a position dangerous to himself. It was useless to think of Annarly as of value; useless really to think of anyone, he knew it, and knew now that he himself was valueless, merely a cat’s-paw; still, he made one last effort. “Mr. Duncan was always troubled about that second letter,” he said; “he might think it important that I had made a mistake about the date, about having written it at all.”

“No doubt,” Sir Joseph answered. “I think it rather important myself, or at least regrettable, very regrettable, indeed; temporary loss of memory in a man of your age is to be regretted. I suppose we must ascribe it to that? There is no other explanation, unless it is that I made a mistake, and”—he put a wrinkled finger on the other’s arm—“I never make mistakes. Understand, I never make mistakes.”

He had made no mistake in Brett. There was really no need for him to say, as he did when they parted that evening, “There are two essential qualities in a secretary, the one is memory, and the other discretion. In both you have shown yourself lamentably deficient to-day; don’t let it occur again. I believe it is the first time; it must be the last, else”—he glanced with meaning towards the door—“there is no alternative.”