“Then why didn’t you say in your telegram exactly what you thought, and ask for your authorization? You’d have got it quick enough.”
“Well, really, Mr. Alexander, I couldn’t be absolutely sure, you know, and I didn’t like to take the responsibility of making it public.”
Alexander pushed back his chair and rose. “Anything I do can be made public, Phil. You say that you believe the lower chords are showing strain, and that even the workmen have been talking about it, and yet you’ve gone on adding weight.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Alexander, but I had counted on your getting here yesterday. My first telegram missed you somehow. I sent one Sunday evening, to the same address, but it was returned to me.”
“Have you a carriage out there? I must stop to send a wire.”
Alexander went up to the telegraph-desk and penciled the following message to his wife:—
I may have to be here for some time. Can you come up at once? Urgent.
BARTLEY.
The Moorlock Bridge lay three miles above the town. When they were seated in the carriage, Alexander began to question his assistant further. If it were true that the compression members showed strain, with the bridge only two thirds done, then there was nothing to do but pull the whole structure down and begin over again. Horton kept repeating that he was sure there could be nothing wrong with the estimates.
Alexander grew impatient. “That’s all true, Phil, but we never were justified in assuming that a scale that was perfectly safe for an ordinary bridge would work with anything of such length. It’s all very well on paper, but it remains to be seen whether it can be done in practice. I should have thrown up the job when they crowded me. It’s all nonsense to try to do what other engineers are doing when you know they’re not sound.”