Stone's Fall

'You're going to fire off torpedoes at passing battleships until one sinks?'

'I don't think that will be necessary,' he said, with the air of one who would have loved nothing more. 'Detonating explosives against plates of armour will do.'

'I'm almost disappointed,' I said. 'But isn't a gun more reliable? Less chance of something going wrong, and less chance of the other ship getting out of the way? And cheaper?'

'Possibly so, but to send a shell of equivalent power on its way you need a gun weighing some sixty tons. And for that you need a very large ship. Which has to be armour-plated, and carry a large crew. With a few of these, a corvette of three hundred tons and a crew of sixty will be a match for the largest battleship in the world.'

'The Royal Navy will thank you for that, I'm sure,' I said ironically.

Macintyre laughed. 'They won't. This will neutralise every navy in the world! No one will dare send their capital ships to sea, for fear of losing them. War will come to an end.'

I found his optimism touching, if misplaced. 'That would kill off demand for your invention, would it not? How many of these could you sell?'

'I have no idea.'

I did. If it worked, and he could persuade one navy to buy them, then he would sell them to every navy in the world. Admirals are as discerning as housewives in a department store. They must have what everyone else is having.

'Does it work?'

'Of course. At least, it will work, when one or two problems are ironed out.'

'Such as?'

'It has to go in a straight line, as I say. That is quite straightforward. But it also has to propel itself at a constant depth, not rising and falling. Through the water, not over the top of it.'

'Why?'

'Because ships are plated above the waterline, but not so heavily below it. Shells burst when they hit the water, so there is rarely direct damage under sea level, and so little need to protect the hulls so far down.'

'How much does it cost to make these?'

'I've no idea.'

'And how much will you try to sell them for?'

'I haven't thought about that.'

'Where would you manufacture them? You could hardly do it here.'

'I don't know.'

'How much have you spent on developing it so far?'

All of a sudden the boyish look of enthusiasm which had animated his face since he began talking about his machine faded. He looked his age and more so, careworn and anxious.

'Everything I have, or had. And more.'

'You are in debt?' He professed to like direct questions. Normally I do not, except where money is concerned. There I desire absolute and unambiguous precision.

He nodded.

'How much?'

'Three hundred pounds. I think.'

'At what rate of interest?'

'I don't know.'

I was appalled. However skilled Macintyre was as an engineer, he was no businessman. In that department he was a naïve as a newborn babe. And someone, I could tell, was taking advantage of that.

I do not object to such practices. Macintyre was an adult and far from stupid. He had entered into an agreement fully conscious of what he was doing. If he did so, that was his fault, not the fault of the person who was so exploiting his unworldly nature. It turned out, so he told me, that he had needed money, both to pay the wages of his men, and to buy the material necessary for his great machine, and had assumed he would be able to pay it off with a job he had taken on designing the metal work for a new bridge to be thrown across the Grand Canal. But that project had collapsed, so no payment was forthcoming, and the debts had mounted up.

'I arrived in Venice with enough money, so I thought, to live indefinitely. But this machine has been more difficult than I could ever have imagined. The problems to be solved! You cannot believe it. Building the case and ensuring it is watertight, designing the engine, the detonator, coming up with an entirely new device to regulate depth. It takes time and money. More money than I have.'

'So you are heavily in debt, with no assets to draw on, paying what I imagine is a high rate of interest. How long before you are unable to continue?'

'Not long. My creditors are pressing. They are insisting that the torpedo be tried out and quickly, otherwise they will call in their debts.'

'Can you do that?'

'I'm going to give a demonstration soon. If it works, I will be allowed to borrow more. But it is too early; much too early.'

He did not continue, and had no need to.

'I think you need a bookkeeper as much as you do a draughtsman or a machinist,' I said. 'Money is as important a component as steel.'

He shrugged, plainly uninterested. 'They're thieves,' he said. 'They'd steal my invention and leave me with nothing unless I was careful.'

'I hate to say it, but you are not being careful.'

'Oh, everything will be just fine next week. When the test is done.'

'Are you sure?'

He looked weary. 'Any sort of calculation in engineering I can do. But show me a contract, or a page of accounts . . .'