I was smoking and scanning the columns of that morning’s journal when my eyes fell upon a heading which caused me to start in surprise. The words read, “Steel Discovery: New High-Speed Metal with Seven Times Cutting Power of Old.”
The short article read as follows:
“Few prophecies have been more quickly justified than that of Professor Greer at the Royal Institution on December 16th last. He then said:
”‘As to Mr Carnegie’s prophecy on the decadence of British steel metallurgy, this exists only in the imagination of that gentleman. So far as quality is concerned, Britain is still first in the race for supremacy.
”‘I am strongly of opinion that in a very short time the best high-speed steel will be a back number. It is probable that a year hence there will be on the market British steel with a quadruple cutting power of any now known to metallurgy.’
“The prophecy has come true. Professor Greer, lecturing again at the Birmingham Town Hall last night, stated that the firm of Edwards and Sutton, of the Meersbrook Works, Sheffield, of which Sir Mark Edwards is the head, have, after his lengthened experiments, placed on the market a steel with from three to seven times the cutting power of existing high-speed steel, and which, in contradistinction to present material, can be hardened in water, oil, or blast.
“The new steel, whose cutting power is almost incredible, said the Professor, will not call for any alteration in present machinery.”
The impostor had actually had the audacity to lecture before a Birmingham audience! His bold duplicity was incredible.
I re-read that remarkable statement, and judged that this new process of his must have been purchased by the great firm of Edwards and Sutton, whose steel was of world repute. His was, I presumed, an improvement upon the Bessemer process.
That a man could have the impudence to pass himself off as Greer was beyond my comprehension. As Waynflete Professor at Oxford he would, I saw, be well known, even if he did not go much into society. And yet he had stood upon the platform in the Town Hall of Birmingham and boldly announced a discovery made by the man whose identity he had so audaciously assumed.
This action of the impostor, who had no doubt sold the Professor’s secret at a high figure to a well-known firm, absolutely staggered belief.
I called Drake, mounted upon the ugly chassis again, and together we sped post-haste back to London. At ten that night I was in the Grand Hotel at Birmingham, and half an hour later I called at the house of a certain Alderman named Pooley, who was a member of the society before which the bogus Professor had lectured on the previous evening.
I had some little difficulty in inducing him to see me at that late hour. He was a busy solicitor, and his servant referred me to his office in Bull Street, where, she said, he would see me in the morning. But, being pushful, Mr Pooley at last consented to see me.
“Yes,” he said, as I sat with him in his dining-room, “it is quite true that Professor Greer lectured before us last night, and made a most interesting announcement—one which seems to have caused a good deal of stir in the world of metallurgy. The papers were full of it to-day.”