Prototype Car Part 2

By the fourth week of May, Prototype Number One was no longer an engine on an oak bed.

It was an operational vehicle.

The road trials were conducted on the private service track that ran along the western embankment behind Machine Works Number One. It was eight hundred yards of hard-packed gravel and crushed clinker, bordered on one side by the high masonry wall of the company coal yard and on the other by an open drainage ditch. It was flat, straight, and entirely shielded from the inquisitive eyes of the Helmarte public.

Arthur Pendelton stood upon the loading platform, a pair of brass field glasses hanging from his neck, surveying the machine with an expression of profound commercial horror.

"It is an open agricultural bench mounted upon a carriage axle, Ernest," Arthur shouted over the rhythmic chug-chug-chug of the idling cylinder.