Michael Annarly was talking to Lady Sibyl Carson. He had been dining
with the Carsons, and he was staying on after the other guests, deep in
talk with his hostess. He was the last to move, excepting, of course,
those who were staying in the house. These were all men; Carson did not
encourage the idea of women visitors in case they should want to go out
with the guns, and Lady Sibyl had few friends of her own sex for whom
she cared enough to insist on inviting. The men lounged by the fire
in the room, part hall, part billiard-room, to which the company had
retired when the more formal guests departed. Lady Sibyl and Annarly
were some distance from the others, she in a deep-seated chair which
toned in colour with the golden russet of her dress and hair and eyes.
Annarly sat beside her in earnest talk, as he had sat ever since their
coming into the hall; since then neither had conceded even a pretence
of recognising the existence of other people. When the one or two local
guests, who had lingered on, came to take leave of their hostess, she
for the moment waked to a recollection of their existence, made a few
remarks in a charming manner, and then obviously went back in mind to
where she was before. Annarly, who in spite of his thirty years was
not really well versed in the ways of the world, certainly not of
this world, did not acquit himself even so well as that. He remained
completely absorbed until a rather pronounced yawn from one of the
group by the fireplace arrested his attention and reminded him of the
lateness of the hour and the way he had outstayed other people. He rose
to say good-bye.
Lady Sibyl rose too; her eyes were shining and the whole of her
beautiful face was alive with the excitement and admiration which some
women feel for success.
“Good-bye,” she said, and her voice thrilled with a note of pride as
well as sympathy, “good-bye—and thank you! Thank you, for telling me. I
am proud that you should have thought it worth while to tell me. I need
not say that I am proud that you have accomplished it—I always knew you
would! All the same”—she offered him her hand, and her voice dropped
half a tone softer—“I’m glad.”
He took the hand, his unusually sensitive and telepathetic fingers
gripping hers closely. She did not resent it, she was moved out of
herself by what he had that evening told her.
“I may come on Saturday and tell you what they say?” he asked.
She nodded. “I shall be very impatient till then. I only hope they will
treat you well, what I call well; I have bigger ideas than you, you
know. When you give me leave to speak, I think I shall see if I cannot
influence them. A woman can help sometimes.”
“Sometimes?” Their eyes met, and for the moment she had the feeling,
perhaps he had too, that she had been half the inspiration of his work,
or at least that her sympathy and interest had helped through the
hardest places.
Carson broke in here. “You off, Annarly?” he said, quite unconscious of
any thing he might be interrupting, and went on to speak of the state
of the roads and the peculiarities of Annarly’s car.
“Who’s that chap?” Dawling, one of the men by the fire, asked, when he
had gone.
“Annarly?” Carson said; “oh, he’s at Galhardy’s.”
Most of those present were that in a sense, or at least had some
interest or nominal connection with the great foundries; one of the
great foundries of Europe which, a town in itself, lay not far distant
and was of more vital interest to the surrounding country than the
British Constitution or any other human institution. Dawling himself
had little interest in it, but, from intimate conversation with those
who had, most of the more important names were familiar to him;
Annarly’s he could not place among them: also, though not very acute,
he had a vague consciousness that the man was not one of themselves.
“What is he?” he asked, “I don’t seem to have heard of him.”
“That’s because you’ve been out of England the last three years,”
Brett, a smallish man in the corner, said. “Had you been here, you’d
have known—from his own demonstration, if nothing else—that he is
the greatest genius of modern times. I don’t quite know what one
should call him: engineer, mathematician, electrician, mechanic, or
Jack-of-all-trades, but it’s quite certain he’s a marvel.”
The sarcasm of the tone was so obvious that it was easy to see Brett,
secretary to the board and private secretary to the chairman of
directors of Galhardy’s, did not love this talented acquisition of the
great firm. Even the unobservant Dawling saw that, and Lady Sibyl, who
had gone to a bureau at the far end of the room, caught the intonation
though not the words. She closed the bureau and came to the group by
the fire.
“Are you talking of Mr. Annarly?” she said. “He is an extraordinary
person, extraordinarily clever; much, much more able, I think, than any
of you yet realise.”
She stood looking down at the blaze a moment, her eyes reflecting the
flickering lights, and a thoughtful smile curving her lips.
Her husband grunted; he was not in the least jealous, it never
occurred to him to be jealous of any poet, musician, scientist, or
other man of brains with whom his wife chose to beguile her otherwise
tedious intellectual solitude. It certainly did not occur to him to be
jealous of Annarly. Though he was quite unlike all who had gone before
him in favour, and was also possessed of tangible abilities which
Carson himself could value, if not understand, he was no more one of
themselves than the others were; no more one in ordinary life, the life
of the house and the coverts, and so on.
Brett, from beyond his host, moved a little impatiently. “I am afraid
you are too generous, Lady Sibyl,” he said. “I don’t think you’ll find
it wise to accept Annarly entirely on his own valuation.”
“I don’t,” she answered, “I estimate him a great deal higher than
that. Oh”—as she saw Brett’s expression—“I know some people think
him conceited, but he is not. It is true he can do and understand
things few others can, and he knows it; but he does not think highly
of himself on that account—though perhaps rather poorly of those who
can’t. That, with his way of refusing to comply with old ways that he
sees no use for, might make him unpopular. But he does not overestimate
his own ability; I think you will say that yourself soon.”
“I may,” Brett conceded, but his tone did not suggest conviction.
“He’s all right,” Carson said carelessly; “a bit short of the sense of
proportion, thinks nothing on earth matters but his own job, and don’t
always see straight about that, otherwise not bad.”
“Isn’t he?” said Brett, with a vindictive flicker of the eyelids. But
he said it quietly, and as Lady Sibyl was then saying good night, no
one paid any particular attention.
When she had gone Dawling observed, “The genius seems to know something
about the gentle art of making enemies.”
“Annarly?” Carson said. “He’s all right, a bit big for his boots, but a
clever devil.”
“How did he get in?”
It was a question of some interest; to get into Galhardy’s, with any
prospect of achieving a position or income worth the having, was a
more than difficult thing unless one were born to it, or acquired it
by great influence, income, or marriage. It was quite evident from the
attitude of all present that Annarly had not done it in any of these
ways. Brett answered now, and his tone was sarcastic.
“By merit,” he said; “he got in by his own merit and singular genius
some three years ago, and by that alone has risen to what he is.
And contrived to get more rope, more power, and more money to fool
with than any other man, though he might be ten years his senior and
the nephew of a director. He is the pet of half the board—a pretty
expensive pet, I should be sorry to say what he and his experiments
have cost the firm—and the bane of the other half, and most other men
in authority too.”
“H’m,” Dawling said; then asked, “Who put him in in the first instance?”
“It’s reported,” Carson answered, “that some woman brought him to the
notice of one of the directors, old Joe, in fact, wasn’t it? At all
events, he always says now that he found him himself, was struck of
a heap by some invention he submitted, or something. Anyway, he was
found, and found, or thought to be, the man for the aerial torpedo
problem.”
“Is that his line?” Dawling asked, interested.
“That’s it. Not but what he’s reported to do plenty else beside—weaned
on ballistics, I believe, and knows all that’s worth knowing about
steel and guns—though he can’t hit a bunny at twenty yards. But it’s
the torpedo business that he depends on; the directors expect him not
only to perfect the means of discharging torpedoes at airships, but
also to give them a suitable torpedo-head too. They’ve been expecting
it some time, and he keeps ’em expecting; he’s a clever chap.”
“Krupps also expect it of him,” Lee-Brendon, an older man who had not
heretofore spoken, observed. “So, I believe, do the other great firms.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean there’s nothing in it,” Carson explained, “he’ll
get it all right, not much doubt about that; our directors don’t make
mistakes where their own interests are concerned. They must have pretty
good grounds for their faith in Annarly to let him have his head as
they do. Not the least clever thing about him is that he’s been able
to get it; ’tisn’t every man with no more than brains to back him, who
could: I admire the chap for that, though it has made him, as I say, a
bit big for his boots.”
He knocked the ashes out of his pipe as he spoke, as a signal that he
at least was ready for bed.
* * * * *
And Michael Annarly?
He drove home through the soft darkness of a late September night,
thinking no more of the night than of the car he drove (and could not
really afford). Neither was he, and this was rarer with him, thinking
of the difficulties of his work and the jealousies and obstacles which
met, and must meet and often thwart, a brilliant young outsider in an
old, close preserve. To-night he was not thinking of them or of ways to
deal with, dodge, or surmount them; he was done with that now, clear
of them, free of them and the need to consider them. He was thinking
of a woman whose gown repeated the russet of the bracken-clad hills
at this season of the year, and whose eyes, a tone darker, looked
glowingly into his when she had bade him come again, and said she would
be impatient till his coming. A woman whose voice had quivered with
enthusiasm and given the commendation to be coveted when he had brought
her, first of all people, word of the completion of his achievement.
Through all his pulses ran the thrill of victory; not over her, though
perhaps he believed in a tenderness for himself, but over fate and
circumstances. She and her glowing sympathy were but as a crown set
on the other achievement; but one that, for the first time, made him
realise that it was victory. Before it was work—good work—not perfect
to his ideal standard, but good, what he had looked to do and believed,
although he as no other knew the enormous difficulties, that he would
do. But it was no more than that till her kindling eyes and thrilling
voice had shown it as victory. No longer only a sober, if important
achievement of great mechanical skill and mathematical ability; no
longer even an overcoming of obstacles, an outwitting of enemies, and
surmounting of difficulties, but Success, Victory, the rare, heady
thing.
That night was a memorable one for Michael Annarly. Some at least are
allowed one such. A night when there is little looking before or after,
little consciousness of any but the moment, no formed consciousness
of that, only a living it in every nerve and every fibre to the very
full. The Zenith, though a man at the time does not know it—knows
nothing but he is he, and the world, all that is not he, is his for the
grasping. Divine delusion which comes near to fulfilling itself by the
strength of its conviction! Divine moment when the long fight is almost
won and victory, showing clear, is upon the threshold, and the Fates,
won as women by success, offer to add other gifts—all other gifts,
everything, the whole world to be had for the asking! Divine arrogance
when a man, realising himself a self-existing unit and feeling his
power, approaches to the Divinity! A moment such as that in which
Nebuchadnezzar, struck with the sudden realisation of his own ability
and the greatness to which it had achieved, cried, “Behold this great
Babylon which I have builded!”
* * * * *
It was late by the time Michael Annarly reached his rooms; by then he
was thinking quite soberly of the immediate future and of the directors
of Galhardy’s, before whom he should put the final designs for the
aerial torpedo. They knew it was completed, he himself had told them so
in answer to the last of their many inquiries; not set out clear and
in the superfine form presented to boards, but all there, all the real
work done. It was a great admission for him, the first time in all the
while he had worked at the problem, that he owned himself satisfied;
the directors, well aware that his standard would not be below theirs,
were dignifiedly excited. They requested that he would have the final
designs ready to put before them at the next board meeting. He had
undertaken to do so, not omitting to mention that it would be as much
as he could do to be ready, although he had all the notes, statistics,
and details of experiments collected and on the way to be reduced to
order.
It is possible, had he not himself felt some youthful impatience to
demonstrate what he had done, they might have had to wait longer
for the result. He was young enough to have enjoyed inventing some
fictitious reason for delay, by way of reprisal for what he had
suffered in the past from their impatience and from various of their
methods and those that obtained in the great firm. Other men might
think he enjoyed a most unusual, unwise, and unprecedented liberty
of action in Galhardy’s; he himself held no such opinion. He had
rebelled much against what he considered the lack of it, and against
the red-tape which ruled here only less than in a great Government
department. The work had been done in half the time, so he told Lady
Sibyl more than once, had they given him a definite sum of money, the
control of a certain number of men, and the power to get what he wanted
made in other parts of the foundry, and asked no questions and received
no reports till all was finished.
They had, not unnaturally, done no such thing, though by degrees they
allowed him more freedom than had ever been given before. With the
result that, with doubt and hesitation on their part, and fretting
against obstacles and going round them on his, he had worked at a
pace never before approached in Galhardy’s; making many enemies among
superiors, many admirers among inferiors, entirely unconscious of both;
turning out the most astonishing quantity of work, although privately
holding that he was terribly wasting his time. There had been other
aerial torpedoes, and other torpedo-heads of his designing before
this last one, which was to combine the excellencies of all others.
Before now the directors would have been satisfied with the results
that he could have put before them. One of the manifestations of their
impatience to which he most objected was that which made them ready to
be satisfied with a good deal less than perfection in their anxiety
to be first in solving the world’s new problem of warfare. They aimed
at making money, as they would by being first; he aimed at perfection
of work and, where work was concerned, was arrogantly contemptuous of
their aims; so far it was he who had carried the day. But all that was
over now, the work was complete. That evening he had told Lady Sibyl
about it, and received her sympathy and applause; shortly it would be
formally put before the directors, and thereafter would come other,
more prosaic though possibly more tangible, applause.
He was rather late leaving his rooms the next morning. Said rooms were
situated on the outskirts of the town which, though it bears another
geographical name on the map, might really be called Galhardy’s.
Living in that part of the town was disproportionately expensive; men
of a certain standing, younger sons of good families and protégés of
the directors put into the great firm, had their rooms there; as they
were of one class (often of one family) and that a class which is
expected to pay disproportionately—and not look at the change—prices
ranged high. Annarly was not of that class, and his original instinct,
inherited from respectable, but by no means wealthy, city people, was
not to pay outrageously for what was not worth it, and to look at the
change. Nevertheless, he lived in the approved precincts and paid the
demanded price with the best grace; he reckoned he got something for
it—he was counted in as one of the others.
When he left his rooms that morning, the other men, though not all
strikingly punctual, were already gone about what they were pleased to
call their work. It was decidedly late, but he had not felt inclined
to get up; he had hardly slept at all till after other people were
well astir. He often did not at that time; the fury with which he
habitually worked, taken in conjunction with the nervous fret of much
of his present life, was beginning to tell on him. A man cannot work
ceaselessly at advanced brain-work all day and wear himself to pieces
all night rebelling against the impediments in his path and devising
ways of surmounting them, without having to pay for it. The moment of
victory and cessation is liable to be the one when Nature begins to
think of sending in her bill.
Not that it mattered Annarly being late; no one concerned with
time-keeping at Galhardy’s would have ventured to comment on the fact
at this stage of his career, whatever might have been the inclination
earlier. With no more than a careless nod to those he chanced to
meet, he walked into his own room. He had his own room now, and had
had it some time; he said he could do double the work if he were
secured solitude and freedom from interruption. It had taken six
months’ persistent argument, application, and persuasion to win the
concession; no one of his standing in the firm had had it before; but
in the end it was won—with the ill-will of several, and he did double
the work and was satisfied. To-day, when he went in, he found several
letters and papers waiting for him; there was only one of interest, a
little note from Lady Sibyl; a few words of rejoicing in the success,
rather warmer and more unguarded than those spoken last night. It had
been written almost directly after he had left, while the glow of
enthusiasm was still on her. More than once before, after they had
spent an evening together, he had received such a note from her, one
which, as it were, carried on the talk just a point further, and said
just a little more than she herself ventured to say. Not of matters of
heart; rather those intimacies of soul and mind and the confidences
of sympathy and sentiment which give the fascination to friendship
between men and women, and sometimes land it elsewhere. Annarly had the
letters, some half dozen of them. He meant to destroy them, not that
there was anything incriminating in them, but they seemed to him too
delicately private to be fairly kept. As yet he had not done so; he had
the writer’s permission to keep them till the end of the year, on the
condition that all were burnt then.
For a minute or two he looked over some of the past ones, standing
by the fire to do it. He sometimes, as to-day, wasted nearly half an
hour before he began work, and some of his compeers in the great firm
knew it. It is true he usually worked one, two, or three hours after
they left off, frequently forgot the existence of lunch, and always
did in a day three times as much as they could at the best. In a vague
way some of them knew that too, but the half hour in the morning made
more impression. At length, however, he put the letters away; he had
the not uncommon habit of keeping private papers among business ones,
though in this case they, in a long envelope, were put in a drawer by
themselves. Or, rather, with no other company than the pistol he had
taken to carrying last winter, when he was working late and coming home
by lonely ways at a time that he had been threatened by some workmen
whose dismissal he had procured for incompetency.
The letters locked up, he set seriously to work.
He had not been at it much more than half an hour, and had not got
beyond the stage of finding it acutely distasteful and being fully
persuaded that he was physically and mentally incapable of doing it,
when an interruption occurred. He looked round impatiently: in spite
of his conviction that he did not want to work, he did not herald
the momentary respite with pleasure. The impatience was considerably
mixed with surprise when the boy who had knocked announced, “Sir James
Shannon.”
Sir James was one of the younger directors, a very rich, a very able
and, in private life, a haughtily exclusive man. He was the one of the
whole body most inimical to Annarly; indeed, it was only his clear
perception of the importance of keeping abilities which rival firms
were only too ready to buy which prevented him from open condemnation
of the man and all his works. That Sir James should come thus was
unprecedented; he had no social dealings with him, and, unlike some
other of the directors, never asked for unofficial (and unremunerated)
opinions on scientific or technical matters in which he was interested.
Any other reason for his coming was difficult to imagine; Annarly was
at a loss to understand it. The reason why Brett, secretary to the
board, should accompany him was equally difficult to guess. Something
warned him that it was not favourable, and instinctively he received
the visitor with a little less deference and a little more assurance
than he usually kept for this one of the directors.
The reception was not without effect; Sir James, who had ignored the
greeting on entering and shown a very marked and considerable distance
of manner, altered a little.
“Mr. Annarly,” he said coldly, but with courtesy, “I regret that a
very unpleasant business brings me here this morning. There are some
questions I am compelled to put to you; I must ask you to answer them
fully and plainly.”
“If I can,” Annarly said, and swiftly reviewed the different matters
which, from time to time, he had not communicated to the directors. And
again instinct and Brett’s hardly veiled satisfaction warned him that
the thing was serious.
He pushed forward a wide-seated chair and invited Sir James to be
seated, more as if he were receiving a friend at home than as if he
were face to face with a difficult situation.
Sir James sat, but it was his only concession. Brett, ignored, and
resenting it, took a small chair beyond his chief and watched silently.
“It has come to the knowledge of the directors,” Sir James began, “that
you have recently entered into negotiations with certain foreign firms
for the sale to them of inventions worked out here, and consequently
the property of this firm.”
Annarly lifted his head quickly. “Seeing that the directors——” he began.
“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.
“You see,” he said, “they are letters”—he told them over counting them,
then turned to the drawer, as if to feel for more—“only letters——”
“Yes,” Sir James said impatiently, “they will be returned to you as
soon as we are assured——”
“Oh, no, they won’t,” Annarly said, and his tone was quiet and
confident. “They will never be returned to me by you, for you’ll be
dead before you get them.”
He swung round as he spoke, and Sir James found himself looking down
the barrel of a revolver.
He stepped back a pace: he was not a coward, but the thing was
unexpected and unpleasantly close. Brett stepped back too; he was very
near his chief, and, owing to the giving back and the position of the
furniture, quite unable to move away.
“Don’t be a fool, Annarly!” Sir James said sharply. “Put that down.
You’ll gain nothing by such folly.”
“Nor lose anything, either,” Annarly answered; “I’ve already done that;
I’ve not much more to lose.”
And therein, if it were true, lay the danger, and Sir James knew it.
For a second or two he did not move, nor did Annarly; they looked at
one another, seeing not much but the revolver between.
“I don’t want to make a scene,” Sir James said. “I have done what I can
to spare your feelings and avoid publicity, but if you compel me to it,
I shall have to have recourse to personal violence—we are two to one, I
may point out, and there are men within call.”
“Call them,” Annarly answered. “Though it will hardly be necessary, the
report should do it. I shall have time to get in two shots, one for
you and one for me, between the calling and the coming, and before Mr.
Brett becomes very violent.”
Brett’s white face reddened faintly; but if he had any thought of
retaliation the big bulk of his chief effectually prevented. Sir James
was no fool; he recognised the seriousness of the situation, and he was
not likely to allow matters to be fatally precipitated by Brett.
“You are hopelessly blackening yourself by this folly,” he warned
Annarly. “What is the object of it?”
Annarly looked grim. “Is there any blackening left for me to do?” he
asked. “The object? The letters. They are private letters, I have said
it, in no way concerning the firm; I’ll burn them, if you like you can
see them burnt, but I will not give them up.”
For an almost imperceptible second Sir James hesitated, then he said,
“Do you swear that those are private letters and nothing but private
letters, in no way concerned with the foreign negotiations, or anything
connected with them? On your honour, you swear it?”
“On my honour.”
“Burn them.”
They were thrown in the fire. But though Annarly had magnanimously
forborne to put the interrogative stress the situation warranted on
promising on his honour, he did not magnanimously lower the revolver.
He might trust Sir James, but he did not trust Brett; so while the
flames caught the papers no one of the three moved. Indeed, it is
doubtful if any one of them watched the burning of Lady Sibyl’s
sympathetic and emotional words, in themselves a matter of curiously
little real moment to all. It was only by the increasing and dwindling
of the light that the destruction was observed.
When the flames had died down, Annarly’s arm dropped; he turned away
as if vitality had suddenly gone out of him. Sir James moved towards
the door; Brett, carrying the confiscated papers, followed, eyeing the
pistol.
“It’s not loaded,” Annarly roused himself to say, and threw it on the
empty desk.
For half a second Sir James paused, a flush coming under his skin; then
he went out, and Brett went with him. Annarly was left alone.