Success
had come to do something; it has seemed so a little while, now this has
come along. I have a feeling—though it may be wrong, probably it is if
you feel against it—that this may be the thing to do.”
He did not say he felt against it. He looked doubtful—not
sceptical—such reasons and influences had more weight for him than for
many lesser brains; he never scouted them.
“It isn’t a great thing, this offer,” he warned her; “boiled down it
amounts to little more than foreman in a small dyeing works in a small
Midland town among small people.”
“I know,” she agreed: “it doesn’t sound much, it isn’t either; but I’m
not sure that matters—are you?”
“I suppose not,” he said. “No, I don’t think I care much what the kind
of life is really, but the kind of work there wouldn’t be much either.
There would be to see George Foregood’s invention put on a working
basis, and to superintend the warp dyeing, no more than that.”
“I know,” she said again; “still, I almost think it is worth while.”
“I wonder?” he said. “After all, it is a definite place in the world,
a definite piece of work—not that which I was trained for and thought
I was cut out for; I may as well give up the last ghost of any thought
of that—still, something. A couple of old men, one pig-headed, the
other soured and cross-grained, a dilapidated collection of buildings,
plant that is a good deal scrap, no capital to speak of, and a job and
process of which I know little and care less. It doesn’t look much;
yet, I own, in a way, the place attracted me when I first went there.
I dare say it sounds silly—not to you, things don’t to you—but the
ramshackle place and the pottery, shrewd old man did attract me at the
first. I had a sort of feeling one might make something of it.”
She nodded. “That is it,” she said. “I think that’s what I feel.”
Whereupon he naturally swung back to the opposite view and protested
that there could not really be anything made of it. “A small living,”
he said, “in a small way perhaps, and a comfortable end for the old
boy. Though, after all, I suppose, that is something.—Do you know, I
have half a mind to go into it!”
For a little he turned the matter, weighing its pros and cons, speaking
them aloud, but without seeking any answer or comment; really putting
them to himself, not her. In the end the balance was in favour.
“—Though,” so he said, “it is useless to have any delusion about it;
there are no possibilities in the concern.”
“No,” she agreed, “not in the concern; that’s why smallness, or
largeness, or anything else does not really matter. The possibilities
are not in it, they are in you.”
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