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."
"But just now, when there is such competition," the younger man
demurred. "And certainly that's the new line of development."
Alexander shrugged his shoulders and made no reply.
When they reached the bridge works, Alexander began his examination
immediately. An hour later he sent for the superintendent.
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