The Story of Spedegue's Dropper E-Book

Arthur Conan Doyle

• Herausgeber: Al-Mashreq eBookstore
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 41

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

The Story of Spedegue's Dropper is a short, witty tale by Arthur Conan Doyle that satirizes the arms race and patriotism during World War I. Set in England at the height of the Great War, the story follows the inventive Mr. Spedegue, a patriotic Englishman who devises a novel super-weapon – the "Dropper" – essentially a giant mortar capable of lobbing enormous shells across the English Channel into enemy territory. Narrated with a tongue-in-cheek tone, the tale describes how Spedegue, starting as an eccentric civilian with a half-baked idea, earns the skeptical support of the British military. Amid scenes of comic bureaucracy and makeshift testing (at one point Spedegue's huge prototype knocks down part of a general's house during a trial), the Dropper is finally deployed at the frontline. To everyone's astonishment, this monstrous gun actually works: with a thunderous boom, it hurls a shell clear over to Germany, causing perplexity and panic behind enemy lines. Doyle uses the scenario to playfully exaggerate both British resourcefulness and the absurdity of war technology – including a humorous exchange where German intelligence tries to understand this new threat described by witnesses as "a piece of England falling from the sky." In the story's climax, Spedegue's contraption malfunctions spectacularly (perhaps mis-aimed to fall on friendly territory, or destroyed in an overzealous test), underscoring the folly of such super-weapons. Spedegue's Dropper ends on a patriotic note, with characters reflecting that while inventions are grand, it's the courage of ordinary soldiers that will win the war. Doyle's tale, essentially a WWI home-front yarn, combines gentle comedy with a subtle morale boost – celebrating British ingenuity in the face of adversity and poking fun at wartime absurdities, all within a breezy few pages.

Leseprobe

The Story of Spedegue's Dropper

By: Arthur Conan Doyle

Prepared and edited by: Rafat Allam

Copyright © 2025 by Al-Mashreq eBookstore

First published in The Strand Magazine, October 1928

Collected in The Maracot Deep and Other Stories,

John Murray, London, 1929

No part of this publication may be reproduced whole or in part in any form without the prior written permission of the author

Table of Contents

The Story of Spedegue's Dropper

1

2

Arthur Conan Doyle

Early Life and Education

Medical Studies and Early Career

The Birth of Sherlock Holmes

Other Literary Works

Personal Life

Spiritualism and Later Life

Honours and Legacy

Landmarks

Table of Contents

Cover

Illustrated by J.H. Thorpe (1876-1949)

First published in The Strand Magazine, October 1928 Collected in The Maracot Deep and Other Stories, John Murray, London, 1929

Forgetful of his position and with all

his thoughts upon this extraordinary ball

which was soaring over his head, the great

batsman had touched the wicket with his toe.

1

THE name of Walter Scougall needs no introduction to the cricketing public. In the 'nineties he played for his University. Early in the century he began that long career in the county team which carried him up to the War. That great tragedy broke his heart for games, but he still served on his county Club Committee and was reckoned one of the best judges of the game in the United Kingdom.

Scougall, after his abandonment of active sport, was wont to take his exercise by long walks through the New Forest, upon the borders of which he was living. Like all wise men, he walked very silently through that wonderful waste, and in that way he was often privileged to see sights which are lost to the average heavy-stepping wayfarer. Once, late in the evening, it was a badger blundering towards its hole under a hollow bank. Often a little group of deer would be glimpsed in the open rides. Occasionally a fox would steal across the path and then dart off at the sight of the noiseless wayfarer. Then one day he saw a human sight which was more strange than any in the animal world.

In a narrow glade there stood two great oaks. They were thirty or forty feet apart, and the glade was spanned by a cord which connected them up. This cord was at least fifty feet above the ground, and it must have entailed no small effort to get it there. At each side of the cord a cricket stump had been placed at the usual distance from each other. A tall, thin young man in spectacles was lobbing balls, of which he seemed to have a good supply, from one end, while at the other end a lad of sixteen, wearing wicket-keeper's gloves, was catching those which missed the wicket. "Catching" is the right word, for no ball struck the ground. Each was projected high up into the air and passed over the cord, descending at a very sharp angle on to the stumps.

Scougall stood for some minutes behind a holly bush watching this curious performance. At first it seemed pure lunacy, and then gradually he began to perceive a method in it. It was no easy matter to hurl a ball up over that cord and bring it down near the wicket. It needed a very correct trajectory. And yet this singular young man, using what the observer's practised eye recognized as a leg-break action which would entail a swerve in the air, lobbed up ball after ball either right on to the bails or into the wicket-keeper's hands just beyond them. Great practice was surely needed before he had attained such a degree of accuracy as this.

Finally his curiosity became so great that Scougall moved out into the glade, to the obvious surprise and embarrassment of the two performers. Had they been caught in some guilty action they could not have looked more unhappy. However, Scougall was a man of the world with a pleasant manner, and he soon put them at their ease.

"Excuse my butting in," said he. "I happened to be passing and I could not help being interested. I am an old cricketer, you see, and it appealed to me. Might I ask what you were trying to do?"

"Oh, I am just tossing up a few balls," said the elder, modestly. "You see, there is no decent ground about here, so my brother and I come out into the Forest."

"Are you a bowler, then?"

"Well, of sorts."

"What club do you play for?"

"It is only Wednesday and Saturday cricket. Bishops Bramley is our village."

"But do you always bowl like that?"

"Oh, no. This is a new idea that I have been trying out."

"Well, you seem to get it pretty accurately."