Success
wondered if they were manufacturing, and, when careful inquiries in
likely places tended to show that they were not, why they were not.
But they were now he knew, not from Carson’s words, rather in spite of
them, as women know things when they love, a subtle instinct hardly
possible except to love. Galhardy’s were making his steel, and there
was something curious about it, or about their not having done so
earlier. He stayed to dine with Carson. For love a man will do harder
things than dine where he would much rather not, though perhaps it is
not every man who can love a new process for making oil-cooled steel,
the child of his brain.
* * * * *
One of the carpenters brought a message to Nan at the inn. It was
written on a scrap of paper, and ran, “_Am dining with Carson; don’t
wait._” Nan accordingly had supper alone, and afterwards read by the
fire, until she fell asleep. She was aroused by Michael’s return.
Directly he entered she saw that something was the matter, but she did
not remark on it, and he came to the fire, saying something about the
night having turned colder.
She agreed, though she fancied the cold must be in himself and the
lowered vitality which comes to some in utter depression, for the night
was warm with a strong south wind blowing.
“I did not know Mr. Carson was expected back,” she said casually.
“He was not,” Michael answered, “he turned up unexpectedly, soon after
you left.”
He stirred the fire and sat staring into it for a while. “Carson’s a
good sort,” he said at length, the gloom in his eyes lightening for a
moment. “There’s not another man connected with Galhardy’s, from Sir
Joseph to the least of the greasers, who would have behaved to me as he
did to-day.”
“I’m glad!” Nan said. There were not very many people who had gone out
of their way to be pleasant to him. “You always liked him, didn’t you?”
“I hardly knew him really; I knew Lady Sibyl better. She was not there
this evening, he was alone.”
Nan nodded. Lady Sibyl, she perceived, was not the cause of the
depression, he spoke her name too carelessly, hardly aware of it; the
trouble must be in connection with work and the loved invention.
“Are Galhardy’s making your torpedo?” she asked.
“I don’t know, I have not heard. Of course, they must be; the thing was
all worked out when I left, all on paper, anyway; they could not fail
to get it. They would not have kicked me out till they were sure; I
told you that before.”
He had, over and over again. “Still,” she suggested, “they don’t seem
to be making it; surely if they were some news of it would have leaked
out and reached you? Even if there were no little paragraphs in the
papers, saying that Messrs. Galhardy had successfully overcome the
great difficulty of modern warfare and that sort of thing, you would
have heard something of it somewhere.”
“I don’t know, I might; though quite likely not. How should I unless by
chance at some society’s meeting? I don’t have much to do with those
sort of people and things now. I have given up scientific work, or,
rather, it has given me up, I think we may take it, for good and all.”
She did not reply; she did not believe it was for good and all, though
she could not deny that it almost began to look like it.
“I wonder,” she speculated, “why they are not making the torpedo, if
they are really not making it?”
“Perhaps they cannot agree as to who’s to have the honour of
‘inventing’ it,” he said.
“Inventing it?” she asked.
But he did not explain, and she pressed for no information, coming to
sit on the hearthrug in silence.
For a little neither spoke; at length he said abruptly, “You know my
steel?”
She nodded; but he did not go on, the mention of the steel had recalled
the process to the momentary exclusion of other thoughts.
“It was a process for oil-hardened steel,” he said, forgetting he had
told her this before. “A good thing; the elongation was extraordinary
for so high a tensile strength. I imagined when I left Galhardy’s they
would apply it on a large scale almost at once.”
“Didn’t they?”
“No—I don’t know why. The first big lot is being made now; in fact,
they are going to quench some thirty tons to-night.”
“Are they? How I should like to see it!”
“There’s not much to see; it is only lowering a hot ingot of steel into
a big tank of oil, and leaving it there till it is cold, the ordinary
oil-hardened process. The improvement I made is before that, in the
steel itself, not the hardening.”
“Will they call it after you?”
He said not. “Processes are numbered, not named, in a firm like
Galhardy’s, nothing else is practical.”
“Still,” she said, “I imagine they all know it’s yours? It’ll be good
for them to think of that and to remember what you could do when they
get stuck with other things.”
A curious expression came over his face. “The steel is not mine; it is
Brett’s,” he said.
“What!”
“Brett’s. Yes, that is it; he has taken it.”
“But how could he? How could he! They all know it’s yours, all the
directors, some of the workmen even must know it. How could it ever
pass for his?”
“He will have made some slight alteration in my process; he would have
had the going over of my papers, and so could have done so; something
small, enough to give appearance to his claim, but not enough to spoil
the process. I hope to Heaven it is small! There is no room for messing
about in that! A little might be done without spoiling to any great
extent, but not much; if he has done anything much he will have ruined
it. I’ve half a mind to write and tell him the only change they can
make without detriment to the result.”
He rose as he spoke, the passion for the perfection of work, and the
fear that it should be spoiled, eclipsing for the moment everything
else. But he did not write, Nan advised him against it; though
afterwards, when she realised, as he never did, what sentiments such a
letter would arouse in the recipient, she was almost sorry she did. The
argument she used was consideration for Carson who, no doubt, ought not
to have given the information.
Michael was obliged to admit this. “Though,” he explained, “he didn’t
exactly give it, I found it out. I don’t suppose he knows how much he
did let me know.”
“Does he know this is your steel?”
“He knows it was: it is Brett’s now. The man who makes the last
alteration has the final claim; he has made it; no one can say anything
against that.”
“It is stealing!”
“It is not illegal; if the alteration were a real improvement, not a
thing of straw, it would be fair.”
“But it is not!” she protested. “You know it is not, they know it is
not. Why are they doing it? Why is Brett doing it? He must know no one
will really think it his. It can’t be for the credit of invention.”
Michael shrugged his shoulders. “I gather he is to have a commission on
the steel turned out.”
“Is he?” Nan said, and sat thinking.
So the directors of Galhardy’s, or at least some of them, were paying
Brett? That was what it amounted to; the “improvement” to the process
was no blind to them, they would know all about that; but the improver
was to be given commission none the less. And since it was not
Galhardy’s way to give anything for nothing, it was given for something
which was not steel. Hush money? Nan wondered about it, and wondered
what Brett had done to oblige in the affair of last September; and what
some other bigger man had done that he thought it advisable to pay
for. She glanced across at Michael; he had risen and was standing by
the table absently fingering the lamp. He roused himself, and suggested
going to bed.
She acquiesced, and watched while, as he lowered the light, the last
glow momentarily lit his face. He was thinking of his steel again, she
knew, and again fearing lest it should have been spoiled to make some
cover of decency for the theft. A sudden wave of anger swept over her,
anger and pity too. They might have left him that! They had taken so
much and he, now at least, asked so little! He would have ignored the
theft, he would not have given the lie to any who said in his presence
that the process was another’s, could he have been sure that way,
or any other, of keeping it unspoiled. She could have wept for the
injustice of it all.
“Oh!” she said suddenly. “I hope they will fail! I hope they will fail
horribly!”
He turned at the words; she was kneeling upright on the rug now, her
face towards the dying fire, her eyes gleaming in the glow.
“I would like them to fail when they try to make the steel!” she said.
“I would like their oil-tank to fire. It would be the justice of God!”
She stretched clenched hands out suddenly. “I would like it to fire
to-night!”
On the words, almost as they were spoken, there came a light. No spurt
from the dying embers, no chance rekindling of the extinguished lamp,
but a great light; bright almost as a suddenly come dawn, but redder,
a fierce orange glow which revealed everything in the room with a
terrible plainness and the faces of the two to one another grimly.
Michael jerked the curtain back from the window, and Nan, rising
swiftly, came to look out. Away eastward a sheet of flame lit the
heavens, a tongue full a hundred and fifty feet high which leapt
skywards, turning the night to a new and terrifying day; a great
orange-red flame which lit luridly the whole dark landscape and the
volume of smoke that, even here, could be seen to roll about it.
For a second they stood looking, then their eyes met.
“Galhardy’s,” he said. “The oil-tank.”
She nodded, her breath coming a little short. “Yes,” she said, “the
justice of God.”
CHAPTER XI
The fire at Galhardy’s made a good deal of talk; even the London papers
mentioned it, and in the immediate neighbourhood of the foundries it
was naturally the sole subject of conversation. It was the largest
fire they had had there for a very long time, and, though nothing
approaching the whole of the works was destroyed, the damage was
estimated at something like ten thousand pounds. As Galhardy’s took
their own insurance, the directors felt it.
The immediate cause was the firing of the oil-tank, a great receptacle,
containing at the time at least eight thousand gallons of oil. Such
an accident may happen when an ingot of steel is being lowered to be
quenched, for the question of temperature then is a nice one: let it
be too low, the steel is spoiled; let it be too high, ignition is a
serious danger. But as to precisely how it occurred on this occasion,
there was a little uncertainty. Brett, now recognised as the perfecter
of the new process, and personally interested in the steel, was
standing on the crane at the time of the accident. He had been in the
works for some little while previous. An ingot of steel has no idea of
schedule time and anyone’s convenience; it is ready when it is ready,
and can neither be hastened nor hindered. This one was late, so Brett
had to wait some little while in the works, closed—so far as they ever
were closed—for the night.
The firing of an oil-tank is a startling sight to a man who has never
seen it before, even if it begins modestly with the springing up of
little, licking flames along the surface of the liquid as the ingot
first touches it. Whether they arise from the contact of overheated
metal or from another more obscure cause, the effect is the same to
the man who knows there are eight thousand gallons of oil below the
lighting surface, and that he is standing just above it. Once, when
such a thing happened at Galhardy’s, a man standing watching had the
ingot lowered steadily and swiftly to the tank, in spite of the wind
which drove the smoke and flames right into the crane, and the lid on,