by Richard Hull
But to return to Tonescu.
It was not long before I had him seated in my room and had introduced my fellow directors. At first, of course, we went over very much the same ground as I had already covered during our conversation at tea in the Allied Drug Trades Exhibition. It was rather dull for me, and I could not help thinking that my colleagues might have accepted my account of it without having it all repeated. However, that was so like both of them. They never would trust me. I got rather bored with it. I got still more bored when Barraclough persisted in asking about the site in Rumania where the manufacture was carried on.
“And your factory. That is at Bucharest?”
“But no, monsieur. There are too many people who look too much in Bucharest. It is at Galatz that we carry out our little work. There it is easier to obtain privacy.”
Very foolishly Spencer went and asked where Galatz was, a matter of no importance whatever. Even if he was ignorant, it would have been better manners to have pretended to have known.
By the time that Tonescu had drawn maps of Rumania all over several pieces of paper, it had been established that Galatz was in or near—I really forget which—the Dobrudja, wherever that may be, apparently more or less the north-east of the place, and was to some extent a port, being on the Danube, I think he said, which was navigable for fair-sized vessels as far as that. What earthly importance was all this? It seemed to me to be merely a waste of time. It was not until afterwards that I found out that Spencer had actually had the impertinence to learn up something about the geography and climate of Rumania in order to test Tonescu’s accuracy! A more gross piece of impertinence I have never heard of! Of course it was done entirely with the object of discrediting me.
The real joke, however, was that Spencer had spent hours in learning all about Bucharest, whereas Tonescu’s factory was hundreds of miles away from there. Besides, even if the man was not able to pass a difficult examination in the geography of his own country, what on earth had that to do with it?
The discussion was brought back to reality by Barraclough, who I am bound to admit, was a little more practical than Spencer. He enquired about the output of the factory. The question seemed to startle Tonescu, until I explained that we only wanted to know so that the advertising could be commensurate with the supplies available. Even then he was very vague.
“Ah, yes. We can produce much, very much.”
“Yes, but how much?” Barraclough persisted.
“As much as is wanted. Yes, a great deal.”
“But could you not be a little more explicit? I mean how many pounds or hundredweight—if you do measure it that way and not by volume instead of weight.”
Apparently Tonescu was not quite fully conversant with English weights and measures.
“Many hundreds of weights,” was his answer.
“That is still rather vague, you know.”
Driven by Barraclough into a corner, the little man had to produce a figure.
“I think about ten thousand levitzi a day.”
“Levitzi?” Spencer queried.
“It is our Rumanian measure.”
Thereafter ensued a perfectly appalling discussion as to how many levitzi, if I have the word right, went to a ton. It was rather a futile discussion as, apart from the fact that we arrived at no conclusion, it was pretty clear that Tonescu had been forced to guess. That was where Barraclough’s cross-examining methods always failed. They forced an answer, but they did not necessarily get a correct answer, or even one which you felt was likely to be right. Nor even, in fairness, could anyone answering in such circumstances, be fairly held to have committed himself.
However, ultimately Barraclough left the point, very little wiser than before. So far Spencer and he had occupied one hour and a half and had achieved absolutely nothing. I felt it was time for me to intervene.
“Now, M. Tonescu, let us consider the product itself,” I began. “I think that you may leave its uses safely to us, but I am not quite sure of how you apply it.”
“How you apply?” For once he seemed in difficulty. “Its application. Would not that be the same as its use?”
“No, I mean—how shall I put it. How you put it on to the glass.”
“Ah, that is one of its great beauties. It is so simple, so easy, so quick. You take the crystals, the specially prepared crystals, dissolve them in water as directed. Then you take one of our own cloths” (he pronounced it clothes which, for a moment, gave me rather an erroneous idea of what he meant) “and you just rub it on, so.” He jumped up suddenly and quite unnecessarily demonstrated the act of rubbing the window. It was rather interesting to see the slight embarrassment which was visible in the faces of his British listeners at any act so violently and unnecessarily demonstrative.
“And then, voilà, it is done.” Tonescu sat down suddenly and crossed his legs, displaying a bright purple sock which clashed violently with the magenta of his tie. I sat quiet, hoping (vainly, of course) that my colleagues would observe how, in a couple of minutes, I had extracted the first valuable piece of information of the interview. I was delighted to find that the process was so easy. I had been afraid that we should have to make special arrangements for the glass to be impregnated.
Spencer of course must look dubious.
“If that is so,” he remarked, “we shall be able to test it easily on your windscreen, Barraclough. But are you sure there are no disadvantages, no drawbacks? To use a common phrase of ours, no fly in the ointment anywhere?”
“I am sure you will not mind it being tested,” I put in, thinking that I saw a slight look of annoyance on Tonescu’s face. As a matter of fact we had discussed this point before, and Spencer had been all for taking the line of assuming that of course the invention must be tested. Finally we had, I am certain, agreed that my suggestion should be adopted, namely that I should ask him tactfully for leave to test it. I know I had not given my consent to any other course, but I am not so sure that Spencer had finally agreed with me. At any rate it was typical of him that in practice he had calmly followed his own plan.
Fortunately, however—I expect it was the result of my intervention—Tonescu did not take offence. He seemed to be more concerned with the second half of Spencer’s question. Possibly he was a little puzzled by the phrase about the fly in the ointment. It had been foolish to use slang, and not quite fair to him as a foreigner. Still, he seemed to follow.
“There is one little difficulty,” he admitted rather grudgingly.
“Ah!” My colleagues were ready to swoop down on the whole thing and banish for ever my introduction.
“It is,” went on Tonescu, “highly poisonous.”
“In what way?” I asked. “If you get it on your hands do you mean? Or does it give off a gas after you have put it on?”
“No, no,” he reassured me quickly, “nothing as difficult as that. It is only poisonous if you eat it.”
“Is that all!” I turned triumphantly to my fellow directors. There was no cause for doubt here. “Why, who on earth would want to eat it?”
Rather grudgingly, it seemed to me—at any rate, with an odd hesitation—they both agreed that no one would. It was curious to see with what reluctance they both gave up what they had hoped would prove an insurmountable objection.
We returned therefore to the question of testing it. Apparently the preparation took some days to set.
“In that case,” I said, anxious for immediate action, “had we better not put some on your car straight away, Barraclough?”
Quite ridiculously Barraclough started raising objections.
“Oh, yes. My car is to be used to experiment upon. It always is my possessions which are used for such things. Why not somebody else’s for a change?”
“But we neither of us have cars.”
“I know, and I suppose in this case, if it is necessary to test it on a car, it will have to be mine, but why not get a piece of glass and test it on that?”
“Because it woul
d not be the same thing. Unless we took out your windscreen and substituted this piece of glass which you suggest. All of which seems to me a most unnecessary—trouble.” I could not say ‘expense’ in the presence of Tonescu, but I am pretty sure Barraclough knew what I meant. After all, he would have been the first, if the circumstances had been reversed, to deprecate spending a penny.
“Very well, but the company must give me an indemnity against any damage that my car may suffer.”
Rather contemptuously I consented to this proposition.
“Besides, really,” I went on, “I am sure that M. Tonescu will assure you that there is absolutely no chance of any damage to your not very new car. In fact, I think that it is rather unnecessary of you to have suggested that there might be.”
I was amused to see Barraclough blush. Perhaps it had been rather a severe snub and, warned by the grin on Spencer’s face, I was about to mitigate it, when Tonescu cut in almost angrily:
“I do not see why my invention—my great invention—should be so much doubted. I come to give you the chance in working with me on one of the tremendous discoveries of the age, and I find you full of suspicion, full of doubt. Oh, yes, gentlemen, I have seen. You wonder if it is in Rumania, how much it is that we can produce; you ask ‘and what fly has this ointment?'; ‘what drawback has it?'; ‘what disadvantage is there?'; ‘what danger to the car?’. You do not say ‘How great, how marvelous!’. You will forgive me but, if we work together, there must be more confidence.”
Quite a definite pause followed the stamp of the foot with which he ended his sentence, and then we all started talking at once.
“Always best to make sure. No offence intended,” was all Barraclough could say.
I was a little slower to start, I had barely said: “But M. Tonescu, we have the greatest respect and interest,” before Spencer shouted me down with that loud voice and manner which I had grown to dislike so much. His method, too, was crude. He merely followed up his previous line of assuming that there would be a test, and proceeded to make arrangements as to how it was to be conducted. Strangely enough it seemed to satisfy Tonescu. Finally it was agreed that some of the crystals were to be given to Barraclough who was to apply them to his car. Forty-eight hours later—or on the first wet day after the compound had been on for that time—we were all to go in it and observe the results. Spencer, too, was going to take some of the crystals and test them on a mirror in his bathroom.
“And you, M. Latimer, will you not try them too?” Tonescu asked.
I thought it was a good moment for a gesture.
“I am perfectly satisfied about it. I want no further demonstration——”
“My dear Nicholas, we have had no demonstration as yet,” Spencer interrupted, trying to spoil the effect.
“—than M. Tonescu’s own confidence. Besides, I am rather afraid of having poisonous things about.”
At that Tonescu was up in the air again.
“You see? Did I not say that the danger of the poison was a serious point to overcome? Ah, gentlemen, think carefully about that poison, I beg of you!”
“It’s quite all right, I assure you,” Spencer put in breezily. “Most people are not so easily alarmed as our friend Latimer. It takes more than that to frighten most people.”
The unfounded impertinence of the man. How dared he imply that I was a coward?
Chapter Nine
It is a fortunate thing for NeO-aD that I am so patient. I fancy that any unbiased person, reading the account I have just given, would see that I had much to put up with, and that only my quiet perseverance led to a successful result—perhaps I should say a successful start—to our venture.
Yet—amazing though it may seem—Spencer actually had the audacity to remark that it would be as well if I were excluded from subsequent interviews! The only ground that I could make out that he had for this incredible suggestion, was that I was too confiding on the one hand and too apt to alarm Tonescu, by making what Spencer was pleased to call a mountain out of the molehill of the difficulty of the compound being poisonous. Naturally I refused to take any notice of such an absurd argument. Really I find it hard to imagine what good even Spencer thought that it was likely to produce. He cannot have expected it to convince me, so I suppose it was really part of his general policy of irritating me.
But I was able to make use of it. That was where Spencer was such a fool. It never occurred to him that if he took a thoroughly stupid line, a more able man would be given the chance of turning his argument against himself. ‘Argument’ is almost too dignified a word to use of Spencer’s malicious chatter. Still, as I have said, it gave me an opening.
“At any rate, I think you will now agree with me, after seeing how temperamental Tonescu is, that it will be unwise to press him any further. Your financial precautions, for instance, Barraclough, will have to be arranged very gently if at all.”
“‘Your’ financial precautions! Aren’t they the precautions for all of us?”
“In a way, yes. But it is you who are so anxious to impose them.”
“As to that, we shall see how things go. But I agree they will have to be suggested with care.”
“Which is why,” Spencer butted in, “I suggested that Nicholas should go away and not interfere.”
He got out of the door, before I had time to reply. It infuriates me that I have not yet been able to think of an entirely satisfactory way of eliminating him. I had a talk to my bank manager yesterday, but like all bankers he was too old-fashioned to see his chances. I have noticed before that as a class they are very poor judges of character and ability. All they can think of is security.
However, so far as ‘Nohaze’—or whatever we eventually decide to call Tonescu’s crystals—is concerned, even the obstinacy of my colleagues has been convinced. Spencer’s ingenuousness was quite amusing. He could not conceal his surprise when the thing actually did all that was claimed for it! Apparently, in the bathroom of the furnished rooms in which he carries on a very undignified existence—how Spencer, who is always throwing his old school tie in my face, can put up with such a place I cannot imagine—is a large mirror over a wash-hand basin. It was, therefore, not his mirror, but a little thing like that would not deter Paul Spencer. He just smeared over a part of it, using rather more than was necessary according to the directions Tonescu had given us, and told the owner of the mirror about it afterwards. That was so like Spencer. Barraclough would have asked for permission in writing and then covered a mathematically measured quarter with the exact quantity prescribed.
When the necessary forty-eight hours had elapsed, Spencer apparently fixed up some fearful device with a rubber tube and a geyser, so that jets of steam were propelled all over the mirror.
“It was perfectly wonderful,” he told us afterwards. “You could see exactly where the stuff had been and where it had not. As a matter of fact I must have splashed it about a bit and you could see exactly where the splashes had been. As for the part where I had rubbed it on properly, it was crystal clear.”
“I wonder if that would be a good name,” I put in; the exact name for the product was worrying me a good deal.
“What would?”
“‘Crystal clear’. You might spell it with a ‘k’.”
Barraclough shuddered. He was always rather a purist about spelling. In fact he was rather inconvenient at times about it.
“Supposing,” he said, “we make certain about the car first. I have brought it up so as to have it available, and put it in a garage near here. It looked like rain this morning and so I risked it. Luckily it has turned out wet, because now we shan’t have to pay more than one day’s garaging.”
He was rather annoyed because I chuckled at him for his stinginess. What did a day or so’s garaging matter? Anyhow, I was perfectly sure that he would charge it up to the company.
The short walk that we took to the car very nearly solved all my difficulties.
It so happened that we had to cross one
of these one-way streets—rather an unnecessary one as a matter of fact, since the traffic there is not very heavy. Actually, as we got to it, there was nothing at all coming along in the only direction allowed by law for that road. However, it has come by now to be absolutely instinctive with me to look both ways before I cross any street. It saves me the trouble of remembering which are one-way streets and which are not. I claim no credit for such an ordinary precaution. It is one which I think all normal people do, in fact, adopt.
On this occasion it was peculiarly fortunate, since it happened that down what would have been the correct side if it had not been a one-way street, came someone, presumably in complete ignorance of the fact that there was any particular traffic control there—some country cousin, I should imagine. But even so I cannot think how he failed to observe the notice boards.
Seeing him come I stepped back on to the pavement. Barraclough had stopped a yard or so back to do up his shoelace. As for Spencer, he was on my left, whereas the car was coming from the right. Now, so natural and sensible were the ordinary precautions that I was in the habit of taking, that it never occurred to me that anybody else would not be equally provident. But I am always failing to allow for the immensity of Spencer’s folly. He just walked straight on.
The driver of the car was so close to me that I could see the alarm on his face. There was a great squeaking of brakes and the car skidded on the muddy road right across to the other side of the street. Then it turned right round, mounting the pavement on the other side of the road as it did so, and finally finished up by hitting a plate-glass window broadside on. It was perfectly marvellous how little damage was done, so far as I could see, to the car or the window.
