8:00 pm 8th August, London.
Farquhar was sitting in his club in London, speaking to a fellow scot, the man was describing the dismal scene which he had seen just that morning. “I was with the London Scottish before the war, I went to South Africa as part of the City of London Imperial Volunteers.” “I stayed on till Haldane and I know how to shoot a rifle and what I saw this morning was a shambles” “Oh” said Farquhar his curiosity piqued. “Yes, the rifles kept jamming,” said the other man. “Colonel Malcolm was in a rage, he made them shoot every rifle and most of 3 crates of ammunition and it was the same result jam after jam, the Rifles were misfeeding” continuing he said “He came up to the house to call off the training he was planning and then he called brigade, then division, then someone in the War Office, that chap got a hard time of it, especially when he denied it was a problem and was likely down to the poor training of the territorials”
Farquhar could see an opportunity at this point and he spoke to the other man with careful consideration. “As you know, I have developed a new rifle”, “Yes that self loading one, thought you had sold it to the Japanese” the other man responded, “The Kingdom of Siam cancelled the order, fortunately I took a hefty deposit so I won’t be out of pocket, but the fact remains that I have 2500 of these rifles and more ammunition than you can poke a stick at.” With that the first man sat up and said “You need to meet Malcolm, he’s the Battalion Commander and a good one, one thing about the London Scottish is they have their own budget, the men subscribe to the Regiment, this year it was £10 a man. They purchased their own machine guns last year, the new Vickers Maxim’s because they were not going to be issued them.”
This sounds too good to be true thought Farquhar, he managed to calm his racing hopes and said levelly “Can you organise a meeting, I can show him the rifle and perhaps we can demonstrate it to him at your estate” “Yes I can, I shall call on him at the Headquarters tomorrow, give me your card and I will call you with the details.”