Stephen Morris (10 page)

Now taking one of these odd-looking formulae of Morris’s at the end of his paper – this would be the one. dz – what was dz? Oh yes, the thickness of the ply. That gave …

He worked a little on the slide-rule. That gave a longeron of .27 sq. inch less sectional area. That would, if the same ratio were carried on throughout the structure, give a fuselage – slide-rule again – something like forty pounds, thirty-eight pounds lighter. That might very well be the case.

He always had had an idea that that fuselage had come out too heavy. It hadn’t looked right in the shops. He’d wondered about that before.

He turned to the paper again. He had always thought that this chap would be worth hanging on to. He wasn’t getting enough now for his technical work, though he was drawing a very fair income out of the firm all told, with his piloting. His technical work was certainly worth another two pounds a week; he must have that, he supposed.

This paper ought to be published; it was good work. And when it was published other people would get to know of this man, and he would have to pay him still more if he was going to keep him. The designer sighed a little. He simply couldn’t afford to go spending more money on his technical staff – the money wasn’t coming into the firm nearly fast enough. They’d have to skip this next dividend – that was already decided. Lucky it
was private money. The orders weren’t coming in as they should. He had hoped for some sign of a production order for the two-seater – it had been up months ago and was a long way ahead of anything the Air Force had. And then there was the torpedo carrier coming on – no sign of a contract for either. This reconditioning of machines for foreign governments was coming to an end, and the firm couldn’t keep going on the negligible profits from experimental machines.

Anyway, Morris must have his two pounds a week more now. He would see him at once. He pressed the bell; the door was opened by the little girl, who stood expectant. She was a good child and made his tea very well, exactly as he liked it.

‘Tell Mr Morris to come and see me,’ he said, ‘and then go and wash your face. You’ve got jam on your cheek. I’ll have my tea at a quarter past four today.’

The girl disappeared; the designer got up ponderously and stretched his immense form. He moved to his window and looked out over the aerodrome. He would ring up Bateman and go and talk to him this evening. Something must be done to raise the wind, to get a decent production order into the shops.

Morris came in.

‘This seems to be very sound, from the rough check I’ve made on it, Mr Morris,’ he said. ‘You’ve been working on it for some time?’

‘About three months,’ said Morris. ‘I think it’s all right – I had it checked over by a more experienced mathematician than I.’

They discussed it for a little.

‘Of course,’ said the designer, ‘if it comes out satisfactory in practice, we’d better adopt it. We’d better see about getting one or two models made up for test. If it doesn’t cost too much. I’ll see Mr Adamson about it.
After we’ve verified it, you’d better see about getting it published.’

He turned to his seat. ‘Let me have a copy some time, will you?’

Morris moved towards the door.

‘One thing more, Mr Morris. You’ll be drawing another two pounds a week for the technical work.’

Morris closed the door softly behind him. One or two more steps like that …

He crossed the open space in front of the offices. Suddenly Rawdon’s window opened and the head of the designer appeared at it.

‘Mr Morris! Come back a moment, if you please.’

As he re-entered the room, Rawdon turned to him. ‘There’s a job coming on that I think you’d better take charge of. Sit down. You remember the Laverock?’

‘The Jenkinson Laverock?’

‘Yes. Well, that’s been bought privately and entered for the Brussels race. It’s going to be reconditioned here, and we expect it very soon. Your friend, Captain Riley, is to fly it. I’m going to get on to whoever there is at the Jenkinson place on the phone and try and fix up to get hold of any performance figures that there may be on the machine. You’d better take that on.’

He gazed out of the window at a hawk, hovering above the aerodrome. ‘They say he’s got a big negative angle of incidence on his tail-plane when he’s doing that,’ he said at last.

He roused himself. ‘It’ll probably mean that you’ll have to go down to the Jenkinson place and search through their files.’

‘Will they let us have that stuff?’

‘It’s been arranged in the purchase that we should have any aerodynamic data about the machine there is. I don’t suppose they’ve got very much; what one particularly wants to discover is the landing speed.’

Two days later, Morris travelled to the Jenkinson works. He explained his business, and was conducted through streets of desolate, empty buildings to the drawing-offices. Here he was introduced to one solitary clerk, who knew nothing about the Laverock and cared rather less.

‘There’s all the stuff we’ve got,’ he said. ‘You’d better have a look yourself.’

Half an hour later, Morris came upon what he was looking for. He found a wind-tunnel test of the model in its original form, before the wings had been cut down, and one or two sheets referring to the alterations. He searched through the mass again to verify that he had overlooked nothing, and made his way back to Southall.

Here he spent half an hour in calculation and took the results of it to Rawdon.

‘I can’t find out exactly what the wing section is,’ he said. ‘That makes the adjustment of this wind-channel test rather difficult.’

‘R.A.F. 15 modified, I think,’ said the designer.

‘I took it as that,’ said Morris. ‘That makes her stall at eighty-one – eighty-one and a half. I got the engine curve out of our own stuff, but it’s for the Mark II Stoat – I think she’s probably got the Mark I. That gives her a top speed of a hundred and eighty-five.’

‘She won’t win the Brussels race on that,’ muttered Rawdon. Morris was silent.

‘And she lands at eighty-one, you say … ’

Two or three days later the Laverock arrived on a lorry and was deposited in the erecting-shop. She created a mild sensation on arrival; every draughtsman in the works seemed to have business in the erecting-shop that afternoon. Certainly she was a very pretty little piece of work. The months of neglect in storage had passed lightly over her and she still retained the appearance of newness under her dirt, the show finish that the Jenkinson
people had been famous for. The engine came in for a certain amount of inspection, too; apparently it only differed in slight detail from the Mark II, and was supposed to give approximately the same power. Only James, the engine draughtsman, shook his head over it.

‘They had a lot of trouble with the Mark I Stoat at Farnborough,’ he said.

Malcolm Riley arrived next day, and spent the morning in examining the machine in detail as it was being erected. When he could think of nothing else to inspect, he sat down on a pile of lumber and looked at it; it was in this attitude that Morris found him.

‘Cheer oh,’ said Riley. ‘What do you think of that? Think it’ll fly?’

‘Don’t you worry about that,’ said Morris cheerfully. ‘It’ll do all the flying you want it to, and a bit more.’

‘Thank you,’ said Riley dryly, ‘that had already occurred to me. The question seems to be not so much will it fly as will it stop flying – in an ordinary aerodrome. Eighty-one, you say?’

‘Eighty-one and a half.’

Riley turned and looked at him. ‘I hear you’re doing pretty well in this show,’ he said. ‘Rawdon said something about a paper on fuselages.’

‘Nobody seems to have any mathematics in this business.’

‘I’ve never heard that mathematics cut much ice in aircraft before.’

‘It doesn’t really,’ said Morris. ‘Only now and again one has a lucky shot like this.’

‘I never got any of those lucky shots,’ said Riley. ‘But perhaps that’s because I don’t know mathematics. Tell me, is there anywhere I can put up round here? I want to be on the spot for a bit and see this thing through.’

So Riley took a room in the neighbourhood and
haunted the shops for a day or two. Presently the machine was ready.

Morris was working in the office when he heard the sudden roar of an unaccustomed engine.

‘Who’s that?’ he asked at large.

‘Running up the Stoat for Riley, aren’t they?’ said the engine draughtsman. ‘Sounds a bit wobbly.’

Morris slipped from his seat and made his way down to the aerodrome. He must not miss this.

Riley flew the Laverock very steadily off the ground. There was nothing sensational about the performance. The machine accelerated very quickly and he got her tail up within ten yards or so. After a relatively long run she ‘unstuck’ and went off in a straight line for Uxbridge, climbing steadily but not fast. In a little time he was seen to be turning and came back over the aerodrome at a good speed, a white glimmer against the blue sky. He circled for a little, then throttled down and came in to land. He slipped down over the hedge at the far side of the aerodrome half a mile away, and flattened out close above the ground. The machine floated on over the grass, without touching, in a nasty-looking, unconventional manner for some hundreds of yards at a high speed.

The little group by the hangars stirred uneasily.

Once the tail dropped a little as if to land; the machine had not yet lost way and rose a foot or two from the grass. Finally she sank, touched lightly, rose again, touched again and held the ground this time, ran along, and stopped near the hangars. Riley taxied her in, jumped down, and came to meet them.

‘Don’t care about that engine,’ he said shortly. ‘Not giving half the power it ought to.’

Rawdon and he detached themselves from the group and walked up to the office. Rawdon closed the door behind them.

‘Well,’ said Riley. ‘I had her all out at about a thousand feet – she only did a hundred and fifty-nine on the Pitot. I don’t think that engine’s doing its work; she can certainly do better than that. I didn’t care about the feel of it much. It ran very rough, and seemed a bit sluggish on the throttle, you know. It ran pretty regularly, but for the roughness.’

Rawdon pulled down a file of curves and selected one.

‘What were the revs?’

‘Thirteen-twenty.’

‘Only that – full out on the level? That makes it nearly fifty horsepower down – forty-eight point five.’

‘I’d say it was fully that,’ said Riley feelingly.

They discussed a possible deficiency in the propeller for a little and abandoned it as unlikely. ‘It was designed for her as a racing machine, after all,’ said Riley.

Rawdon whistled a little tune between his teeth. ‘Did you notice the landing speed?’

‘Not when she touched. I looked at it as she was doing that ballooning stunt over the aerodrome; it was rather under ninety – say eighty-seven.’

There was a brief silence in the office.

‘The worst of it is,’ said Rawdon, ‘there’s not so much time.’ He turned up a calendar. ‘If she’s going to be packed and crated and shipped over we must allow ten days before the race. That means we ought to start dismantling her the day after tomorrow.’

‘I’d be inclined,’ said Riley, ‘to have that engine down for a top overhaul. It’s no good sending her over in her present condition. She’d be a laughing-stock. Let’s have her down and see if we can get her any better. Get a man down from the Blundell people – a man who knows all about this Stoat. Then after that I can fly her over in time for the race.’

Rawdon was plainly uneasy. ‘I’ll ring up Baynes,’ he said, ‘and tell him about it – ask him to come down this
afternoon if he can spare the time. I should think myself that that’s the only thing to do, unless he decides to send it over as it is and hope for the best.’

But the decision lay with Riley.

So the Laverock was taken to the engine shop and the Stoat extracted with a tackle. On the bench there seemed nothing in particular the matter with the engine. A gentleman came down on a motor-cycle from the makers, took off his coat, and worked on it for three days, assisted by the usual staff. Finally he expressed himself satisfied.

‘But they’re no class, the Mark I,’ he added, wiping his hands on a piece of waste.

Two days later the machine was ready for flying. It was late one evening when Riley took it up again; Morris and one or two others stayed to watch. The promoters of the venture were also present.

The flight was much the same as before. The landing was every bit as unpleasant to watch, though he seemed to be able to do it with certainty, given enough space. The report was better.

‘I got her up to about a hundred and seventy-eight,’ said Riley afterwards to Morris. ‘I think that’s about all she’s going to do. One might get another mile or two out of her on the day – I rather doubt it. They’re putting a fairing on the tail-skid for me now; I’ll have her up again tomorrow morning. Come and have supper at my place; we’ll come back afterwards and have a look how they’ve done that skid.’

It was dark when they returned. Riley went on down to the shop, and Morris turned into the offices to fetch some data that he needed for his private work. He stayed for a time in the deserted office, musing over his papers. Then he went down to the erecting-shop, brilliant with arc-lamps.

The men had finished work upon the tail-skid and
were brewing tea over a blow-lamp preparatory to knocking off. Morris examined the skid critically. They hadn’t made a bad job of it.

‘Where’s Captain Riley?’ he asked one of the men.

The man jerked his thumb over his shoulder. ‘Out on the aer’drome, I think, sir.’ He moved away down the shop through the shadowy aeroplanes, softly whistling the air from
Samson and Delilah.
Morris walked to a crack between the great sliding doors and stood looking out into the darkness; behind him the song was gathering strength and throbbing plaintively between the long iron walls.

He moved out on to the aerodrome. It was a bright, starlit night, calm and warm. If it stayed like that, Riley ought to have little difficulty in getting that machine across … though it was not exactly a job that Morris would have cared to tackle himself.