Success
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