Chapter 2

In such a quandary the Chief Organizer and confidential friend, Ahmed, upon whom the business already largely depended, and who was so circumstanced that he could draw almost at will upon the balances, imagined a most intelligent way of escaping from the difficulties that would arise when the death of the principal was known.

He caused a quantity of hay, of straw, of dust and of other worthless materials to be stuffed into a figure of canvas; this he wrapped round with the usual clothes that Mahmoud’s-Nephew had worn in the office, he shrouded the face with the hood which his chief had commonly worn during life, and having so dressed the lay figure and secretly buried the real body, he admitted upon the morning after the death those who first had business with his master.

He met them at the door with smiles and bows, saying: “You know, gentlemen, that like most really successful men, my chief is as silent as his decisions are rapid; he will listen to what you have to say, and it will be a plain yes or no at the end of it.”

These gentlemen came with a proposal to sell to the firm for the sum of one million dinars a barren rock in the Indian Sea, which was not even theirs, and on which indeed not one of them had ever set eyes. Their claim to advance so original a proposal was that to their certain knowledge two thousand of the wealthiest citizens of their town were willing to buy the rock again at a profit from whoever should be its possessor during the next few weeks in the fond hope of selling it once again to provincials, clerics, widows, orphans, and in general the uninstructed and the credulous—among whom had been industriously spread the report that the rock in question consisted of one solid and flawless diamond.

These gentlemen sitting round the table before the shrouded figure laid down their proposals, whereupon the manager briefly summed up what they had said, and having done so, replied: “Gentlemen, his lordship is a man of few words; but you will have your answer in a moment if you will be good enough to rise, as he is at this moment expecting a deputation from the Holy Men who are entreating him to provide the cost of a mosque in one of the suburbs.”

The proposers of the bargain rose, greatly awed and pleased by the silence and dignity of the financier who apparently remained for a moment discussing their proposals without gesture and in a tone too low for them to hear, while his manager bent over to listen.

“It is ever so,” said one of them, “you may ever know the greatest men by their silence.”

“You are right,” said another, “he is not one to be easily deceived.”

The manager in a moment or two rejoined them at the door. “Gentlemen,” he said, smiling, “my chief has heard your arguments and has expressed his assent to your conditions.”

They went out, delighted at the success of their mission, and congratulated Ahmed upon the financier’s genius.

“He does not,” said the manager, laughing in hearty agreement, “bestow himself as a present upon all and sundry. Nor is he often caught indulging in short bouts of sleep, nor are flies diabolically left to repose undisturbed upon his features—but you must excuse me, I hear the Holy Men,” and indeed from the inner room came a noise of speechifying in that doleful sing-song which is associated in Bagdad with the practice of religion.

The gentlemen who had thus had the luck to interview Mahmoud’s-Nephew with such success in the matter of the Diamond Island, soon spread about the news, and confirmed their fellow-citizens in the certitude that a great financier is neither talkative nor vivacious. “Still waters run deep,” they said, and all those to whom they said it nodded in a wise acquiescence. Nor had the Manager the least difficulty in receiving one set of customers after another and in negotiating within three weeks an infinite amount of business, all of which confirmed those who had the pleasure of an audience with the stuffed dummy that great fortunes were made and retained by reticence and a contempt for convivial weakness.

At last the ingenious man of affairs, to whom the whole combination was due, was not a little disturbed to receive from the Caliph a note couched in the following terms:

“The Commander of the Faithful and the Servant of the Merciful whose name be exalted, to the Nephew of Mahmoud:

“My Lord:—

“It has been the custom since the days of my grandfather (May his soul see God!) for the more wealthy of the Faithful to be called to my councils, and upon my summoning them thither it has not been unusual for them to present sums varying in magnitude but always proportionate to their total fortunes. My court will receive signal honour if you will present yourself after the morning prayer of the day after to-morrow. My treasurer will receive from you with gratitude and remembrance upon the previous day and not later than noon, the sum of one million dinars.”

Here, indeed, was a perplexity. The payment of the money was an easy matter and was duly accomplished; but how should the lay figure which did duty in such domestic scenes as the negotiation of loans, the bullying of debtors, the purchase of options, and the cheating of the innocent and the embarrassed, take his place in the Caliph’s council and remain undiscovered? For great as was the reputation of Mahmoud’s-Nephew for discretion and for golden silence, such as are proper to the accumulation of great wealth, there would seem a necessity in any political assembly to open the mouth from time to time, if only for the giving of a vote.

But Ahmed, who had by this time accumulated into his own hands the millions formerly his master’s, finally solved the problem. Judicious presents to the servants of the palace and the public criers made his way the easier, and on the summoning of the council Mahmoud’s-Nephew, whose troublesome affection of the throat was now publicly discussed, was permitted to bring into the council-room his private secretary and manager.

Moreover at the council, as at his private office, the continued taciturnity of the millionaire could not but impress the politicians as it had already impressed the financial world.

“He does not waste his breath in tub-thumping,” said one, looking reverently at the sealed figure.

“No,” another would reply, “they may ridicule our old-fashioned, honest, quiet Mohammedan country gentlemen, but for common sense I will back them against all the brilliant paradoxical young fellows of our day.”

“They say he is very kind at heart and lovable,” a third would then add, upon which a fourth would bear his testimony thus:

“Yes, and though he says nothing about it, his charitable gifts are enormous.”

By the second meeting of the council the lay figure had achieved a reputation of so high a sort that the Caliph himself insisted upon making him a domestic adviser, one of the three who perpetually associated with the Commander of the _Faithful_ and directed his policy. For the universal esteem in which the new councillor was held had affected that Prince very deeply.

Here there arose a crux from which there could be no escape, as one of the three chief councillors, Mahmoud’s-Nephew, must speak at last and deliver judgments!

The Manager, first considering the whole business, and next adding up his private gains, which he had carefully laid out in estates of which the firm and its employés knew nothing, decided that he could afford to retire. What might happen to the general business after his withdrawal would not be his concern.

He first gave out, therefore, that the millionaire was taken exceedingly ill, and that his life was despaired of: later, within a few hours, that he was dead.

So far from attempting to allay the panic which ensued, Ahmed frankly admitted the worst.

With cries of despair and a confident appeal to the justice of Heaven against such intrigues, the honest fellow permitted the whole of the vast business to be wound up in favour of newcomers, who had not forgotten to reward him, and soothing as best he could the ruined crowds of small investors who thronged round him for help and advice, he retired under an assumed name to his highly profitable estates, which were situated in the most distant provinces of the known world.

As for Mahmoud’s-Nephew, three theories arose about him which are still disputed to this day:

The first was that his magnificent brain with its equitable judgment and its power of strict secrecy, had designed plans too far advanced for his time, and that his bankruptcy was due to excess of wisdom.

The second theory would have it that by “going into politics” (as the phrase runs in Bagdad) he had dissipated his energies, neglected his business, and that the inevitable consequences had followed.

The third theory was far more reasonable. Mahmoud’s-Nephew, according to this, had towards the end of his life lost judgment; his garrulous indecision within the last few days before his death was notorious: in the Caliph’s council, as those who should best know were sure, one could hardly get a word in edgewise for his bombastic self-assurance; while in matters of business, to conduct a bargain with him was more like attending a public meeting than the prosecution of negotiations with a respectable banker.

In a word, it was generally agreed that Mahmoud’s-Nephew’s success had been bound up with his splendid silence, his fall, bankruptcy, and death, with a lesion of the brain which had disturbed this miracle of self-control.

The Inventor

I had a day free between two lectures in the south-west of England, and I spent it stopping at a town in which there was a large and very comfortable old posting-house or coaching-inn. I had meant to stay some few hours there and to take the last train out in the evening, and I had meant to spend those hours alone and resting; but this was not permitted me, for just as I had taken up the local paper, which was a humble, reasonable thing, empty of any passion and violence and very reposeful to read, a man came up and touched my left elbow sharply: a gesture not at all to my taste nor, I think, to that of anyone who is trying to read his paper.

I looked up and saw a man who must have been quite sixty years of age. He had on a soft, felt slouch hat, a very old and greenish black coat; he stooped and shuffled; he was clean-shaven, with long grey hair, and his eyes were astonishingly bright and piercing and set close together.

He said, “I beg your pardon.”

I said, “Eh, what?”

He said again “I beg your pardon” in the tones of a man who almost commands, and having said this he put his hat on the table, dragged a chair quite close to mine, and pulled a folded bunch of foolscap sheets out of his pocket. His manner was that of a man who engages your attention and has a right to engage it. There were no preliminaries and there was no introduction. This was apparently his manner, and I submitted.

“I have here,” he said, fixing me with his intense eyes, “the plans for a speedometer.”

“Oh!” said I.

“You know what a speedometer is?” he asked suspiciously.

I said yes. I said it was a machine for measuring the speed of vehicles, and that it was compounded of two (or more) Greek words.

He nodded; he was pleased that I knew so much, and could therefore listen to his tale and understand it. He pulled his grey baggy trousers up over the knee, settled himself, sitting forward, and opened his document. He cleared his throat, still fixing me with those eyes of his, and said—

“Every speedometer up to now has depended upon the same principle as a Watt’s governor; that is, there are two little balls attached to each by a limb to a central shaft: they rise and fall according to their speed of rotation, and this movement is indicated upon a dial.”

I nodded.

He cleared his throat again. “Of course, that is unsatisfactory.”

“Damnably!” said I, but this reply did not check him.

“It works tolerably well at high speeds; at low speeds it is useless; and then again there is a very rapid fluctuation, and the instrument is of only approximate precision.”

“Not it!” said I to encourage him.

“There is one exception,” he continued, “to this principle, and that is a speedometer which depends upon the introduction of resistance into a current generated by a small magneto. The faster the magneto turns the stronger the current generated, and the change is indicated upon a dial.”

“Yes,” said I sadly, “as in the former case so in this; the change of speed is indicated upon a dial.” And I sighed.

“But this method also,” he went on tenaciously, “has its defects.”

“You may lay to that,” I interrupted.

“It has the defect that at high speeds its readings are not quite correct, and at very low speeds still less so. Moreover, it is said that it slightly deteriorates with the passage of time.”

“Now that,” I broke in emphatically, “is a defect I have discovered in——”

But he put up his hand to stop me. “It slightly deteriorates, I say, with the passage of time.” He paused a moment impressively. “No one has hitherto discovered any system which will accurately record the speed of a vehicle or of any rotary movement and register it at the lowest as at the highest speeds.” He paused again for a still longer period in order to give still greater emphasis to what he had to say. He concluded in a new note of sober triumph: “I have solved the problem!”

I thought this was the end of him, and I got up and beamed a congratulation at him and asked if he would drink anything, but he only said, “Please sit down again and I will explain.”

There is no way of combating this sort of thing, and so I sat down, and he went on:

“It is perfectly simple....” He passed his hand over his forehead. “It is so simple that one would say it must have been thought of before; but that is what is always said of a great invention.... Now I have here” (and he opened out his foolscap) “the full details. But I will not read them to you; I will summarize them briefly.”

“Have you a plan or anything I could watch?” said I a little anxiously.

“No,” he answered sharply, “I have not, but if you like I will draw a rough sketch as I go along upon the margin of your newspaper.”

“Thank you,” I said.

He drew the newspaper towards him and put it on his knee. He pulled out a pencil; he held the foolscap up before his eye, and he began to describe.

“The general principle upon which my speedometer reposes,” he said solemnly, “is the coordination of the cylinder and the cone upon an angle which will have to be determined in practice, and will probably vary for different types. But it will never fall below 15 nor rise over 43.”

“I should have thought——” I began, but he told me I could not yet have grasped it, and that he wished to be more explicit.

“On a king bolt,” he said, occasionally consulting his notes, “runs a pivot in bevel which is kept in place by a small hair-spring, which spring fits loosely on the Conkling Shaft.”

“Exactly,” said I, “I see what is coming.”

But he wouldn’t let me off so easily.

“Yes, of course you are going to say that the whole will be keyed together, and that the T-pattern nuts on a movable shank will be my method of attachment to the fixed portion next to the cam? Eh? So it is, but” (and here his eye brightened), “_anyone_ could have arranged that. My particularity is that I have a freedom of movement even at the lowest speeds, and an accuracy of notation even at the highest, which is secured in a wholly novel manner ... and yet so simply. What do you think it is?”

I affected to look puzzled, and thought for a moment. “I cannot imagine,” said I, “unless——”

“No,” he interrupted, “do not try to guess it, for you never will. _I turn the flange inward_ on a Wilkinson lathe and give it a parabolic section so that the axes are always parallel to each other and to the shaft.... There!”

I had no idea the man could be so moved: there was jubilation in his voice.

“There!” he said again, as though some effort of the brain had exhausted him. “It can’t be touched, mind you,” he added suspiciously; “I’ve taken out the provisional patents. There’s one man I know wants to fight it in the courts as an infringement on Wilkinson’s own patent, but it can’t be touched!” He shook his head decisively. “No! my lawyer’s certain of that—and so’m I!”

Here there was a break in his communications, so to speak, and he had apparently run out. It was not for me to wind him up again. I watched him with a sombre relief as he stood up again to full height, leaned his head back, and sighed profoundly with satisfaction and with completion. He folded up his specification and put it in his pocket again. He tore off the incomprehensible sketch he had made with his pencil while he was speaking, and put it by me on the mantelshelf. “You might like to keep it,” he said pathetically; “it’s a document, that is; it will be famous some day.” He looked at it lovingly, almost as though he was going to take it back again: but he thought better of it.

I was waiting, I will not say itching, for him to take his leave, when a god or demon, that same perhaps which had treated the poor fellow as a jest for a whole lifetime, inspired him to take a very false step indeed. He had already taken up his hat and was turning as though to go to the door, when the unfortunate thought struck him.

“What would you do?” he said.

“How do you mean?” I answered.

“Why, what would you do to try and get it taken up and talked about?”

Then it was my turn, and I let him have it.

“You must get the Press and the Government to work together,” I said rapidly, “and particularly in connection with the new Government Service of Camion’s Fettle-Trains and Cursory Circuits.”

He nodded like one who thoroughly understands and desires to hear more.

“Speed,” I added nonchalantly, “and the measure of it are of course essentials in their case.”

He nodded again.

“And they have never really settled the problem ... especially about Fettle-Trains.”

“No,” said he ponderously, “so I understand.”

“Well now,” I went on, full of the chase, “you will naturally ask me who are you to go to?” I scratched my nose. “You know the Fusionary Office, as we call it? It is really, of course, a part of the Stannaries. But the Chief Permanent Secretary likes to have it called the Fusionary Office; it’s his vanity.”

“Yes,” said he eagerly, “yes, go on!”

“They always have the same hours,” I said, “four to eleven.”

“Four to _what_?” he asked, looking up.

“To eleven,” I repeated sharply; “but you’d much better call round about three.”

He looked bewildered.

“Don’t interrupt,” I said, seeing him open his lips, “or I shall lose the thread. It’s rather complicated. You call at three by the little door in Whitehall on the Embankment side towards the Horse Guards looking south, and _don’t_ ring the bell.”

“Why not?” he asked. I thought for the moment he might begin to cry.

“Oh, well,” I said testily, “you mustn’t ask those questions. All these institutions are very old institutions with habits and prejudices of their own. You mustn’t ring the bell, that’s all; they don’t like it; you must just wait until they open; and then, if you take _my_ advice, don’t write a note or ask to interview the First Analyist. Don’t do any of the usual things, but just fill up one of the regular Treasury forms and state that you have come with regard to the Perception and Mensuration advertisements.”

His face was pained and wrinkled as he heard me, but he said, “I beg your pardon ... but shall I have it all explained to me at the office?”

“Certainly not!” I said, aghast; “it’s just because you might have so much difficulty there that I’m explaining everything to you.”

“Yes, I know,” he said doubtfully; “thank you.”

“I hope you’ll try and follow what I say,” I continued a little wearily; “I have special opportunities for knowing.... Political, you know.”

“Certainly,” he said, “certainly; but about those forms?”

“Well,” I said, “you didn’t suppose they supplied them, did you?”

“I almost did,” he ventured.

“Oh, you did,” said I, with a loud laugh, “well, you’re wrong there. However, I dare say I’ve got one on me.” He looked up eagerly as I felt in my pockets. I brought out a telegraph blank, two letters, and a tobacco pouch. I looked at them for a moment. “No,” said I, “I haven’t got one; it’s a pity, but I’ll tell you who will give you one; you know the place opposite, where the bills are drafted?”

“I’m afraid I don’t,” he said, admitting ignorance for the first time in this conversation and perhaps in his life.

“Well,” said I impatiently, “never mind, anyone will show you. Go there, and if they don’t give you a form they’ll show you a copy of Paper B, which is much the same thing.”

“Thank you,” said he humbly, and he got up to move out. He was going a little groggily, his eyes were dull and sodden. He presented all the aspect of a man under a heavy strain.

“You’ve got it all clear, I hope?” I asked cheerfully as he neared the door.

“Oh, yes!” he said. “Thank you; yes!”

“Anything else?” I shouted as he passed out into the courtyard. “Anything else I can do? You’ll always find me in the room over the office, Room H, down the little iron staircase,” I nodded genially to him as he disappeared.

In this way did we exchange, the Inventor and I, those expert confidences and mutual aids in either’s technical skill which are too rarely discovered in modern travel.

The Views of England

England is a country with edges and with a core. It is a country very small for the number of people who live in it, and very appreciable to the eye for the traveller who travels on foot or in a boat from place to place. Considering the part it has in the making of the world, it might justly be compared to a jewel which is very small and very valuable and can almost be held in the hand. The physical appreciation of England is to be reached by an appreciation of landscape.

It so happens that England is traversed by remarkable and sudden ranges; hills with a sharp escarpment overlooking great undulating plains. This is not true of any other one country of Europe, but it is true of England, and a man who professes to consider, to understand, to criticize, to defend, and to love this country, must know the Pennines, the Cotswolds, the North and the South Downs, the Chilterns, the Mendips, and the Malverns; he must know Delamere Forest, and he must know the Hill of Beeston, from which all Cheshire may be perceived. If he knows these heights and has long considered the prospects which they afford, he can claim to have seen the face of England.

It is deplorable that our modern method of travel does cut us off from such experiences. They were not only common to, they were necessary to our fathers; the roads would not be at the expense of tunnelling through hills, and (what is more important) when those men who most mould the knowledge of the country by the country (the people who deal with its soil, who live separate upon its separate farms) visited each other upon horses; and horses, unlike railway trains, cannot climb hills. They puff, they heave, they snort, as do railway trains, but they climb them well.

On this account, because the roads for the carriages went over hills, and because the method of visiting even a near neighbour would permit you to go over hills, the England of quite a little time ago was familiar with the half-dozen great landscapes of England. You may see it in that most individual, that most peculiar, and, I think, that most glorious school of painters, the English landscape painter, Constable with his thick colours, Turner with his wonderment, and even the portrait painters in their backgrounds depend upon the view of the plains from a height. To-day our landscape painters sometimes do the same, but the market for that emotion is capricious, it is no longer the secure and natural way of presenting England to English eyes.