Success
“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.