The great engineer took the roll with a smile. He opened it hastily, in a most skeptical humor. Walter Tyrrel leant over him, and tried just at first to put in a word or two of explanation, such as Le Neve had made to himself; but an occasionally testy “Yes, yes; I see,” was all the thanks he got for his pains and trouble. After a minute or two he found out it was better to let the engineer alone. That practiced eye picked out in a moment the strong and weak points of the whole conception. Gradually, however, as Walker went on, Walter Tyrrel could see he paid more and more attention to every tiny detail. His whole manner altered. The skeptical smile faded away, little by little, from those thick, sensuous lips, and a look of keen interest took its place by degrees on the man’s eager features. “That’s good!” he murmured more than once, as he examined more closely some section or enlargement. “That’s good! very good! knows what he’s about, this Eustace Le Neve man!” Now and again he turned back, to re-examine some special point. “Clever dodge!” he murmured, half to himself. “Clever dodge, undoubtedly. Make an engineer in time—no doubt at all about that—if only they’ll give him his head, and not try to thwart him.”
Tyrrel waited till he’d finished. Then he leant forward once more. “Well, what do you think of it now?” he asked, flushing hot. “Is this business—or otherwise?”
“Oh, business, business,” the great engineer murmured, musically, regarding the papers before him with a certain professional affection. “It’s a devilish clever plan—I won’t deny that—and it’s devilish well carried out in every detail.”
Tyrrel seized his opportunity. “And if you were to withdraw your own design,” he asked, somewhat nervously, hardly knowing how best to frame his delicate question, “do you think ... the directors ... would be likely to accept this one?”
Erasmus Walker hummed and hawed. He twirled his fat thumbs round one another in doubt. Then he answered oracularly, “They might, of course; and yet, again, they mightn’t.”
“Upon whom would the decision rest?” Tyrrel inquired, looking hard at him.
“Upon me, almost entirely,” the great engineer responded at once, with cheerful frankness. “To say the plain truth, they’ve no minds of their own, these men. They’d ask my advice, and accept it implicitly.”
“So Jones told me,” Tyrrel answered.
“So Jones told you—quite right,” the engineer echoed, with a complacent nod. “They’ve no minds of their own, you see. They’ll do just as I tell them.”
“And you think this design of Le Neve’s a good one, both mechanically and financially, and also exceptionally safe as regards the lives and limbs of passengers and employees?” Tyrrel inquired once more, with anxious particularity. His tender conscience made him afraid to do anything in the matter unless he was quite sure in his own mind he was doing no wrong in any way either to shareholders, competitors, or the public generally.