First and Last (3 page)

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.

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."