Preparing For Action

: The World Peril Of 1910

The next day was a busy one, not only for Lennard himself but for others

whose help he had come to enlist in the working out of the Great

Experiment.



He turned up at Bowcock's house on the stroke of seven, got into his pit

clothes, and was dropped down the twelve-hundred-foot shaft in the cage.

At the bottom of the shaft he found a solid floor sloping slightly

eastward, with three drives running in fan sh
pe from north-east and

south-east. There were two others running north and north-west.



After ten minutes' very leisurely walk round the base of the shaft,

during which he made one or two observations by linear and perpendicular

compass, he said to Tom Bowcock:



"I think this will do exactly. The points are absolutely correct. If we

had dug a hole for ourselves we couldn't have got one better than this.

Yes, I think it will just do. Now, will you be good enough to take me to

the surface as slowly as you can?"



"No, but yo're not meanin' that, Measter Lennard," laughed the manager.

"'Cause if I slowed t' engines down as much as I could you'd be the rest

o' t' day getting to t' top."



"Yes, of course, I didn't mean that," said Lennard, "but just

slowly--about a tenth of the speed that you dropped me into the bowels

of the earth with. You see, I want to have a look at the sides."



"Yo' needna' trouble about that, Mr Lennard, I can give yo' drawin's of

all that in t' office, but still yo' can see for yo'rself by the

drawin's afterwards."



The cage ascended very slowly, and Lennard did see for himself. But when

later on he studied the drawings that Tom Bowcock had made, he found

that there wasn't as much as a stone missing. When he had got into his

everyday clothes again, and had drunk a cup of tea brewed for him by Mrs

Bowcock, he said as he shook hands with her husband:



"Well, as far as the pit is concerned, I have seen all that I want to

see, and Lord Westerham was just as right about the pit as he was about

the man who runs it. Now, I take it over from to-day. You will stop all

mining work at once, close the entrances to the galleries and put down a

bed of concrete ten feet thick, level. Then you will go by the drawings

that I gave you last night.



"At present, the concreting of the walls in as perfect a circle as you

can make them, not less than sixteen feet inner diameter, and building

up the concrete core four feet thick from the floor to the top, is your

first concern. You will tell your men that they will have double wages

for day work and treble for night work, and whether they belong to the

Volunteers or Yeomanry or Militia they will not be called to the Colours

as long as they keep faith with us; if the experiment turns out all

right, every man who sees it through shall have a bonus of a thousand

pounds.



"But, remember, that this pit will be watched, and every man who signs

on for the job will be watched, and the Lord have mercy on the man who

plays us false, for he'll want it. You must make them remember that, Mr

Bowcock. This is no childish game of war among nations; this means the

saving or the losing of a world, and the man who plays traitor here is

not only betraying his own country, but the whole human race, friends

and enemies alike."



"I'll see to that, Mr Lennard. I know my chaps, and if there's one or

two bad 'uns among 'em, they'll get paid and shifted in the ordinary

way of business. But they're mostly a gradely lot of chaps. I've been

picking 'em out for his lordship for t' last five yeers, and there isn't

a Trade Unionist among 'em. We give good money here and we want good

work and good faith, and if we don't get it, the man who doesn't give it

has got to go and find another job.



"For wages like that they'd go on boring t' shaft right down through t'

earth and out at t' other side, and risk finding Owd Nick and his people

in t' middle. A' tell yo' for sure. Well, good-mornin', yo've a lot to

do, and so have I. A'll get those galleries blocked and bricked up at

once, and as soon as you can send t' concrete along, we'll start at t'

floor."



Lennard's first visit after breakfast was to the Manchester and County

Bank in Deansgate, where he startled the manager, as far as a Lancashire

business man can be startled, by opening an account for two hundred and

fifty thousand pounds, and depositing the title-deeds of the whole of

Lord Westerham's properties in and about Bolton.



When he had finished his business at the Bank, he went to the offices of

Dobson & Barlow, the great ironworkers, whose four-hundred-and-ten-foot

chimney towers into the murky sky so far above all other structures in

Bolton that if you are approaching the town by road you see it and its

crest of smoke long before you see Bolton itself.



The firm had, of course, been advised of his coming, and he had written

a note over-night to say when he would call. The name of Ratliffe

Parmenter was a talisman to conjure with in all the business circles of

the world, and so Lennard found Mr Barlow himself waiting for him in his

private office.



He opened the matter in hand very quietly, so quietly indeed that the

keen-sighted, hard-headed man who was listening to him found that for

once in his life he was getting a little out of his depth.



Never before had he heard such a tremendous scheme so quietly and

calmly set forth. Bessemer furnaces were to be erected at once all round

the pit mouth, meanwhile the firm was to contract with a Liverpool firm

for an unlimited supply of concrete cement of the finest quality

procurable. The whole staff of Dobson & Barlow's works were to be

engaged at an advance of twenty-five per cent. on their present wages

for three months to carry out the work of converting the shaft of the

Great Lever pit into the gigantic cannon which was to hurl into Space

the projectile which might or might not save the human race from

destruction.



Even granted Lennard's unimpeachable credentials, it was only natural

that the great iron-master should exhibit a certain amount of

incredulity, and, being one of the best types of the Lancashire business

man, he said quite plainly:



"This is a pretty large order you've brought us, Mr Lennard, and

although, of course, we know Mr Parmenter to be good enough for any

amount of money, still, you see, contracts are contracts, and what are

we to do with those we've got in hand now if you propose to buy up for

three months?"



"Yes," replied Lennard, "I admit that that is an important point. The

question is, what would it cost you to throw up or transfer to other

firms the contracts that you now have in hand?"



There was a silence of two or three minutes between them, during which

Mr Barlow made a rapid but comprehensive calculation and Lennard took

out his cheque-book and began to write a cheque.



"Counting everything," said Mr Barlow, leaning back in his chair and

looking up at the ceiling, "the transfer of our existing contracts to

other firms of equal standing, so as to satisfy our customers, and the

loss to ourselves for the time that you want--well, honestly, I don't

think we could do it under twenty-five thousand pounds. You understand,

I am saying nothing about the scientific aspect of the matter, because

I don't understand it, but that's the business side of it; and that's

what it's going to cost you before we begin."



Lennard filled in the cheque and signed it. He passed it across the

table to Mr Barlow, and said:



"I think that is a very reasonable figure. This will cover it and leave

something over to go on with."



Mr Barlow took the cheque and looked at it, and then at the calm face of

the quiet young man who was sitting opposite him.



The cheque was for fifty thousand pounds. While he was looking at it,

Lennard took the bank receipt for a quarter of a million deposit from

his pocket and gave it to him, saying:



"You will see from this that money is really no object. As you know, Mr

Parmenter has millions, more I suppose than he could calculate himself,

and he is ready to spend every penny of them. You will take that just as

earnest money."



"That's quite good enough for us, Mr Lennard," replied Mr Barlow,

handing the bank receipt back. "The contracts shall be transferred as

soon as we can make arrangements, and the work shall begin at once. You

can leave everything else to us--brickwork, building, cement and all the

rest of it--and we'll guarantee that your cannon shall be ready to fire

off in three months from now."



"And the projectile, Mr Barlow, are you prepared to undertake that

also?" asked Lennard.



"Yes, we will make the projectile according to your specification, but

you will, of course, supply the bursting charge and the charge of this

new powder of yours which is to send it into Space. You see, we can't do

that; you'll have to get a Government permit to have such an enormous

amount of explosives in one place, so I'll have to leave that to you."



"I think I shall be able to arrange that, Mr Barlow," replied Lennard,

as he got up from his seat and held his hand out across the table. "As

long as you are willing to take on the engineering part of the business,

I'll see to the rest. Now, I know that your time is quite as valuable as

mine is, and I've got to get back to London this afternoon. To-morrow

morning I have to go through a sort of cross-examination before the

Cabinet--not that they matter much in the sort of crisis that we've got

to meet.



"Still, of course, we have to have the official sanction of the

Government, even if it is a question of saving the world from

destruction, but there won't be much difficulty about that, I think; and

at any rate you'll be working on freehold property, and not even the

Cabinet can stop that sort of work for the present. As far as everything

connected with the mine is concerned, I hope you will be able to work

with Mr Bowcock, who seems a very good sort of fellow."



"If we can't work with Tom Bowcock," replied Mr Barlow, "we can't work

with anyone on earth, and that's all there is about it. He's a big man,

but he's good stuff all through. Lord Westerham didn't make any bad

choice when he made him manager. And you won't dine with me to-night?"



"I am sorry, but I must be back to London to-night. I have to catch the

12-15 and have an interview in Downing Street at seven, and when I've

got through that, I don't think there will be any difficulty about the

explosives."



"According to all accounts, you'll be lucky if you find Downing Street

as it used to be," said Mr Barlow. "By the papers this morning it looks

as if London was going to have a pretty bad time of it, what with these

airships and submarines that sink and destroy everything in sight. Now

that they've got away with the fleet, it seems to me that it's only a

sort of walk over for them."



"Yes, I'm afraid it will have to be something like that for the next

month or so," replied Lennard, thinking of a telegram which he had in

his pocket. "But the victory is not all on one side yet. Of course, you

will understand that I am not in a position to give secrets away, but as

regards our own bargain, I am at liberty to tell you that while you are

building this cannon of ours there will probably be some developments in

the war which will be, I think, as unexpected as they will be startling.



"In fact, sir," he continued, rising from his seat and holding out his

hand across the table, "I am neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet,

but when the time comes, I think you will find that those who believe

that they are conquering England now will be here in Bolton faced by a

foe against which their finest artillery will be as useless as an

air-gun against an elephant.



"All I ask you to remember now is that at eleven p.m. on the twelfth of

May, the leaders of the nations who are fighting against England now

will be standing around me in the quarry on the Belmont Road, waiting

for the firing of the shot which I hope will save the world. If it does

not save it, they will be welcome to all that is left of the world in an

hour after that."



"You are talking like a man who believes what he says, Mr Lennard,"

replied Mr Barlow, "and, strange and all as it seems, I am beginning to

believe with you. There never was a business like this given into human

hands before, and, for the sake of humanity, I hope that you will be

successful. All that we can do shall be done well and honestly. That you

can depend on, and for the rest, we shall depend on you and your

science. The trust that you have put in our hands to-day is a great

honour to us, and we shall do our best to deserve it. Good-morning,

sir."



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