THAT night after supper Tommy, who felt that his joy over the new car was almost too great to be strictly moral, told Bill all about it and saw Bill's flashing eyes at the thought of a car to experiment with, a lack that he had often bemoaned. Tommy thought Bill was entitled to some pleasure on his own account and, wishing to share his luck, he said, earnestly:
“I can't stand it any longer, Bill; you've simply got to take the fifty dollars. I'll lend it to you or give it to you, or we'll go in cahoots or on any basis you want; but if you don't invent my kerosene-carburetor I'll bust.”
“Yes, but how will I feel if nothing comes out of it?” said Bill, gloomily.
“What about my own feelings, you pin-head! I'll feel a thousand times worse than you, if that's any comfort to you. I've mapped out my selling campaign. Why, I've been selling a thousand kerosene-cars a day for two weeks!”
“Yes, but—”
“You can't be an inventor. All inventors are dead sure of getting there if you only give them time and money. And here I'm giving you capital and from four to five Sundays a month!”
“Don't be funny!”
“In the event of honorable defeat I'll sell their measly gasoline-cars instead of our kerosene wonders, so I'm all right. Will you take the money, Bill?”
“Yes!” shouted Bill, and frowned furiously. “By heck! I just will!”
“Right! Are you sure you can get the generator for the money?”
“Yes, I've got him down to fifty. We'll split even on the patent.”
“And your work?” said Tommy, shaking his head.
“And yours?” shrieked Bill, excitedly. “Whose idea was it? I won't go on any other basis.”
“You are a d—d fool,” said Tommy, severely.
“So are you!” retorted Bill, so pugnaciously that Tommy laughed and said, soothingly:
“Let's not hoodoo the thing by counting the chickens before they are hatched. You wait here.”
Tommy went into his room, unlocked his trunk, and found the little package of gold coins his mother had wrapped up. He read the faint but still legible inscription: “For Tommy's first scrape.”
In that shabby room in a strange city she came to him, the mother he had never known, who had paid for his life with her own, the mother who had loved him so much, whose love began before he was bora.
“Poor mother!” he muttered. And he tried to see—in vain!—a mother's smile on her lips and the blessed light in her eyes. He could not see them, but he felt them, for he felt himself enveloped by her love as though she had thrown a warm cloak about his chilled soul. A great yearning came over him to love her.
He raised the little package to his lips instinctively and kissed the writing. And then, not instinctively, but deliberately, that his love might go from him to her, he kissed it again and again, until the sense of loss came and his eyes filled with tears for the mother he now not only loved, but did not wish to lose.
She had loved him without knowing him. She had planned for him—plans that had come to naught notwithstanding his father's efforts to carry them out.
“Poor father!” he said. He heard his own words. He understood now that his duty to his mother was his duty to his father. He must plan for his father as his mother had planned for him. His father must come first in everything! It was his father, not Tommy Leigh, whom he must save from disgrace.
The money must go to New York. It was not much, but it would help. It was as much as he could save in thirty weeks.
He hesitated. He saw his duty to his father. Then with the package still unbroken in his hand he went back to Bill's room.
“Bill!” said Tommy. His throat was dry. It made his voice husky.
“What's the matter? Is it stolen?” asked Bill in alarm. Tommy's voice had told him something was wrong.
“No,” said Tommy. “Only I—I was thinking—” He paused.
“Cold feet?” Bill smiled a heroic smile of resignation, the triumph of friendship. He was blaming luck and no one else.
Tommy saw the smile and divined the loyalty with a pang. Bill was a man!
It really was Bill's money; the promise had been passed. He had been guilty of a boyish impulse. This was his first scrape! He heard his mother say he must not be thoughtless again.
“No,” said Tommy, firmly, “but—Let me tell you, Bill. My uncle gave this money to my mother before I was born—one hundred dollars in gold. She saved it for me.”
He showed Bill what she had written. Bill held the package near the light and read slowly: “For Tommy's first scrape!” He looked at Tommy uncomfortably.
“She died when I was born,” said Tommy, who wanted to tell Bill everything.
“You can't use it,” said Bill, with decision. “Certainly I can.”
“Not much; I won't take it!”
“You'll have to,” said Tommy.
Bill shook his head.
“I'm sure,” said Tommy, seriously, “it's all right to use it for the work.”
“If it was mine I wouldn't even open the package if it was to save me from jail,” said Bill.
“Well, I will, to save myself from the insane-asylum,” said Tommy. He hesitated, then he opened the package with fingers that trembled slightly. There were ten gold eagles. Tommy counted out five and wrapped up the other five. “Here, Bill,” he said.
“No!” shouted Bill. His face was flushed. He put his hands in his pockets determinedly, so he couldn't take the money.
“There they are, on the table. Now lose them!” said Tommy, cuttingly.
He walked out of Bill's room, put the package with the remaining fifty dollars in his trunk and locked it. He wished he might save the original coins. It struck him he might borrow the fifty dollars from Mr. Thompson and give the gold coins as collateral. A fine notion! But to carry it out he would have to explain.
It was fully ten minutes before he went back to Bill's room. The coins were on the table. Tommy thought of a jest, of a scolding, of what he ought to say to Bill. In the end he said, very quietly:
“Please put it away, Bill. And I'd like you to come with me. We'll go out for a trolley ride.”
“All right,” said Bill. He hesitated, then as Tommy started to go out Bill put the money in his pocket-book and followed Tommy on tiptoe.
The two boys went out of the house in silence. They boarded an open car at the corner, sat together, rode to the end of the line, rode back, walked to the house and entered—all in silence. They went into Bill's room. They had been sitting there fully five minutes when Bill suddenly said:
“Say, Tommy?”
“What?”
“You know,” said Bill, timidly, “a kerosene-engine won't start cold.”
“I know it,” said Tommy, who had read up on the subject just as he used to bone at college just before examinations.
“I've a notion—”
“Have you tried it?” asked Tommy, sternly business-like.
“Not yet, but I dope it out that—”
“Nothing on paper; no mouth inventing,” interrupted Tommy, firmly. “Practical experiments.”
“You're right,” said Bill, with moody acquiescence. “I wish to heaven I didn't have to go to the shop. Some things can't be done by one man alone.” He looked at Tommy and hesitated.
Tommy also hesitated. Then he said: “If you think I can help I'll be glad to, Bill. But you must do exactly as you wish. I don't want to pry—”
“You big chump!” interrupted Bill, “I've been afraid to ask you. You know I don't hit it right every time, and you may lose patience with me and—”
“Tut-tut, me child!” said Tommy.
“Well, I'm only warning you.”
“Bill, I'd like to talk all night, but I guess we'd better go to bed.”
“I sha'n't sleep a wink all night,” Bill spoke accusingly.
“Same here,” retorted Tommy. He was in bed trying not to think about Bill's carburetor and the new cars he would sell by the thousand, when his door opened.
Bill stuck his head into the room. “Tommy!” he whispered.
“Yes, what is it?”
“I—I am much obliged.”
“Did you wake me up to tell me that?”
“Yes. And I have a sneaking notion—”
“My business hours, Mr. Byrnes, are five a.m. to ten p.m.,” interrupted Tommy, because what he really wanted was to listen to Bill all night, and he knew he had to fight against the feeling that he was a kid tickled to death with a new toy.
“All right,” said Bill, meekly; “but I wanted to tell you I was much obliged—”
“You have. Now go to sleep.”
“I can't!”
“Then go to blazes.”
“It's your fault!”
“Good night, Bill.”
“Good night, Tommy. Say, a coil in the manifold intake—”
Tommy snored loudly. Bill's sigh was almost as audible. Then the door closed softly.
TOMMY devoted himself whole-souledly to the study of the car Mr. Thompson had told him to play with. It delighted him to put flesh on what hitherto had been but the bones of theory. He was certain the car would make him very valuable to the Tecumseh Company as a salesman. As soon as he could drive with confidence he began to drive with pleasure, and as soon as he could do that he dragged Bill from the little shop in Mrs. Clayton's woodshed and gave him a joy-ride. Together they made a long list of improvements, nearly all of them suggested by Tommy, who, not being a mechanic, found difficult and complicated what to Bill was a simple matter to fix and adjust. “The Beginner's Delight” was what Tommy, the salesman, called the Tecumseh car as it ought to be, the car that would sell itself. Bill, the mechanic, called it “The D. P.'s Dream.”
Tommy at first dutifully reported the needed improvements to the men in the shop, but they laughed at him and called him Daredevil Dick; or, when they took him seriously, told him that the suggestions were either impractical or unavailable, because they involved structural changes that were either commercially extravagant or mechanically inexpedient.
“In a piece of machinery, as in everything else in life, Tommy,” La Grange told him one day, because he saw the disappointment in Tommy's eyes, “we are up against a series of compromises. One must try to lose as little as possible in one place in order to gain more somewhere else. It is a matter of weighing profits and losses.”
“You must be a bookkeeper under your vest,” retorted Tommy, “you are so struck with the philosophical value of items. Life isn't a ledger. 'Profit-and-loss' was invented as a sort of wastebasket for the mistakes industrial corporations make through their mechanical experts.”
“Keep on discovering defects, Tommy,” laughed La Grange, “you'll make a fine salesman yet.” Then he became serious. “As a matter of fact, some of the best suggestions have come from laymen.”
“Don't look at me. My trouble is that I am ahead of my time,” said Tommy, haughtily, and went off to tell Bill his grievances. After that they decided to jot down the suggestions, and if possible try them out. But Tommy found that, as he understood the car better, fewer improvements suggested themselves. He began to think the trouble was with the buyers.
His resolve to repay the seventeen thousand dollars was by now divested of all heroics and, consequently, of self-pity. It had become a duty thoroughly assimilated. But the reason why the secret had lost its power to torture him beyond measure was that, beginning by hoping, he ended by being convinced that, if discovery came, Mr. Thompson and Bill and Grosvenor and La Grange and Nevin and the others would know that he was not to blame.
But when it occurred to him that his thoughts still were all of self, the reaction was so strong that he almost yearned for discovery. He even dramatized it. He saw the trial, heard the sentence, said good-by to his father at the door of the jail, and then went back to his work in Day-ton, to toil for the bank, to pay the debt just the same, to save his wages, to make a new home and have it ready for his father. He would pay with love what his father had paid for love. And then Tommy told himself that it was not for him to see visions and dream dreams, but to hustle and pay; so that the spur was just as sharp, but not quite so cruelly applied.
One morning Tommy, in his car, left the shop on his way to the country. On Main Street near Fourth he saw Mr. Thompson on foot. Thompson held up his hand. Tommy drew up alongside.
“Give us a ride?” asked Thompson, pleasantly.
Tommy gravely touched his cap with rigid fingers, and asked, “Where to, sir?”
“With you,” answered Thompson.
“Get in.” And Tommy opened the rear door.
Thompson shook his head, got in front, and sat beside Tommy.
Tommy shifted gears more diffidently than usual. They clashed horridly. His face grew red.
“Excited?” asked Thompson, seriously.
“Yes,” answered Tommy, frankly.
“Get over it!” Thompson's advice was given in such a calm voice that it did not help Tommy. Whereupon Thompson laughed and said, “Tommy, I completely wrecked my first seven cars.”
A great wave of gratitude surged within Tommy. It gave him mastery of the machine. He drove on carefully and easily until he reached a good stretch of road near the city limits. He let her out. He did not remember when he had felt such perfect control. He slowed down when they came to a crossroad.
“Going to Columbus?” asked Mr. Thompson.
“If you wish,” replied Tommy, nonchalantly. “Not to-day. Let me off at the trolley line.”
“I'll take you back,” said Tommy.
“Does it interfere with your plans?”
Interfere with his plans? This man who was paying him wages asked that question! Did a finer man live anywhere?
“Not a bit. I was only trying out—” Tommy stopped short. He had been taking liberties with the carburetor by advice and with the consent of Bill. And it was Thompson's car! “What?” asked Thompson.
Tommy told him.
“Lots of room for improvement in the Tecumseh, eh?”
Mr. Thompson's voice was neither sarcastic nor admiring.
Tommy answered, “We think so.”
“Who is we?”
“Me and Bill Byrnes,” smiled Tommy.
“Lots of suggestions?”
“Some.”
“Decreasing as you learn?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Been in the testing-shop?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tell 'em?”
“Yes, sir.”
“All the suggestions?”
“No, sir.”
“Only at first?”
“Right!”
“Why did you stop?”
“Well, we found out that some of the things we thought might be improved couldn't be, by reason of expense or weight or something else. So we decided to try to make sure our improvements would improve or could be carried out before we spoke.”
“Want to go into the shop?”
“Not as a steady job. I'll never make a mechanic.”
“Bill want to experiment in our testing department?”
“I don't think so.”
“Why not?”
“He says it annoys him to have people round him when he wants to be alone.”
“Must be an inventor.”
“Well,” apologized Tommy, “his father was.” Thompson laughed. “The wisest things we say, my boy, are the things we say not knowing how wise they are. And so La Grange and the others laughed when you casually asked about the one thing you and Bill are so interested in?” Tommy almost lost his grip on the wheel. He slowed down so that they barely crawled, and asked, “Please, Mr. Thompson, did La Grange tell you?”
“No; he's never spoken to me about you.”
“Then how do you know?”
Tommy looked into Mr. Thompson's face intently. Thompson answered very quietly: “Didn't you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And didn't they?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, that's how I know.”
Tommy could grasp only that it was obvious to Mr. Thompson. He gave up trying to understand how such a mind worked, and began:
“You see, Mr. Thompson, it's this way. We think—”
“Don't tell me, Tommy,” interrupted Mr. Thompson, quickly. His face was serious. He continued, “You and Bill work at it at home?”
“Yes, sir. That is, he works and I look on.”
“Quite right!” And Thompson relapsed into silence.
Could it be that Thompson spied on them? Tommy almost blushed with self-anger at the suspicion. This man was a wonder, that was all. He didn't have to be a crook. If he wished to be, what defense could avail against him? Moreover, he couldn't be a crook, that was all.
Tommy drove him to the works. Mr. Thompson, without a word, got out. At the door of the office he turned, faced Tommy, and said:
“That's your car.”
“I—I—don't understand—”
“Your car.”
“Oh, Mr. Thompson, I can't—”
“Yes, you can, in my garage. Plenty of room.”
“I didn't mean—exactly that,” floundered Tommy; but Mr. Thompson said, thoughtfully: “You'd better stay with Mr. Grosvenor for a while. Want your salary raised?”
“Not yet. But, Mr. Thompson, I am—”
“So am I!” And with that Mr. Thompson went into the office.
Tommy, determinedly endeavoring not to consider the car his private property, drove it to Mr. Thompson's garage and walked to the Tecumseh Building.
“I am to report to you again, Mr. Grosvenor,” he said to the head of the sales department. “What for?”
“Mr. Thompson's orders.”
Grosvenor looked at Tommy and asked, “Anything else?”
“All he said was that I'd better stay with you for a while.”
“I am glad to have you, my boy. What do you want to do?”
This question would have resembled a sentence from a fairy tale to Tommy if he had not been accustomed to Mr. Thompson's ways. He answered:
“Obey orders.” He meant it exactly, and he looked it.
Grosvenor stared at him and then lost himself in thought. At length he turned to Tommy a face utterly expressionless, but there was a suggestion of play-acting about it that made him think of Mr. Thompson, to whom an inscrutable face came so natural.
Grosvenor said, “I want you to listen.”
“Yes, sir”; and Tommy looked expectant.
“That's all. You will sit in this office all day and listen.”
“Very well, sir.” Tommy's eyes looked intelligently at Mr. Grosvenor, who thereupon pointed to a desk in a corner of the room.
Tommy sat down, looked at the empty pigeonholes, opened a drawer, saw some scratch-pads there, took out one and laid it on the desk. Then he looked to see if his lead-pencil was sharpened. It was.
Mr. Grosvenor, who was watching him, smiled.
“How do you like your new job, Tommy?”
“Very much.”
“What do you expect to learn?”
“How to listen.”
“And what will that teach you?”
“I hope, for one thing, that it will teach me to understand Thompson.”
“Some job, that,” said Mr. Grosvenor, seriously. Then, admiringly, “Isn't he a wonder?”
“He is more than that to me, Mr. Grosvenor,” said Tommy, earnestly.
“And to me, too, my boy,” confessed Mr. Grosvenor, in a lowered voice.
TOMMY used his ears to good advantage, and before long began to think that he was on the verge of understanding the general policy of the Tecumseh selling organization, and why Mr. Grosvenor did not try to sell a Tecumseh car to every man in the United States. The only thing that stood in the way of complete understanding was his own appalling ignorance of the A B C of business. One morning he told Mr. Grosvenor he thought it would be wise if he could learn step by step. For all answer Mr. Grosvenor told him: “You are not here to learn details, but to absorb general principles. Some day Mr. Thompson may tell you what to specialize on. In the mean time just breathe, Tommy. Most people have a habit of telling themselves that a certain thing is very difficult. From that to saying it is impossible to understand is a short step, and that keeps them from trying to understand. Details can be so complex and intricate as to hide first principles.”
Tommy nodded gratefully, but in his heart of hearts he yearned for details, because he remembered that he had not seen any pleasure in selling cars until he had begun to sell, in his mind, his own kerosene-car. But he persevered, because he realized that the ability to “see big” was the most valuable of all. If it could be acquired by hard work he would get it.
He had his more juvenile emotions pretty well under control by now, and would have told himself so had he been introspective enough to ask the question. And yet from time to time there came to him something like a suspicion that he was having too easy a time, too pleasing a task. Did anybody ever have such a job as his? The car gave him so much unearned pleasure that he sometimes feared he was not doing his duty in full. Whenever that thought, prompted by the lingering instinct of expiation, came to him, Tommy took out of his weekly pay all but what was strictly necessary to carry him over till next pay-day. And when he craved to smoke, which was very often, and he conquered the craving, he thought of the many blank pages on the Cr. side of the little black book at home in New York, and he was glad that he had wished to smoke and still gladder that he had not smoked. Prom some remote ancestor Tommy had his share, fortunately not over-bulky, of the New England conscience.
Bill was having all sorts of troubles, trying and untrying. At times success seemed within reach, but an unscalable wall suddenly reared itself before his very nose. And then Bill's anger expressed itself both verbally and muscularly, a perfectly insane fury that made Tommy despair, for he thought an inventor should, above all things, have patience. But Bill's outbursts did not last over five minutes, after which he would return to the attack smiling and so full of amiability that it was a pleasure to watch him work and, later, to listen to him explaining.
To Tommy the most thrilling speeches in the world were Bill's, on the subject of what the automobile industry would become when the Byrnes carburetor was finished. Bill contented himself with seeing it on every automobile in the world; but Tommy saw the seventeen thousand dollars paid off. It would make him master of himself, czar of his destiny; so that the remoter future ceased to be a problem worth considering.
Tommy had so little to do with Mr. Thompson now that he did not even wonder if Mr. Grosvenor ever spoke to the chief about him. One morning the message came by telephone to Mr. Grosvenor's office that Mr. Thompson wished to see Tommy at the works. Tommy instantly went.
“Tommy,” said Mr. Thompson, abruptly, “do you now want to be a cog?”
Tommy was not sure he understood. He realized that he was to be put to work definitely as a small part of the Tecumseh machine, and wondered what Mr. Thompson thought him best fitted for. He himself was not quite sure what he'd like to be; indeed, the fear suddenly came to him that he took an interest in too many things. But whatever Thompson said, he would do.
“I'm willing to be, sir.”
“Have you picked it out yourself?”
“You are the cog-picker, Mr. Thompson. You know more about it than I do.”
“I make mistakes,” said Thompson, frowning slightly.
“If you make one in my case,” said Tommy, very seriously, “I'll tell you—the moment I myself am absolutely sure of it.”
“Now answer my first question,” said Thompson.
“I am sorry to say I have not found out what cog I want to be.” It cost Tommy a sharp pang to acknowledge his failure. That is why he looked unflinchingly into Mr. Thompson's eyes as he spoke.
“Is that all you can say?” Thompson's voice was so incurious that it sounded cold.
“Well, Mr. Thompson,” Tommy said, desperately, “the last cog always seems to be my cog.”
“Why didn't you say so at once?”
“It didn't seem like an answer.”
“It was more; it was a clue.” Mr. Thompson looked at Tommy a full minute before he asked, “Are you still a college boy?”
“I—I'm afraid I am, sir.”
“Keep on being it. Listen to me. You will spend next month in the shop.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Looking!”
“Yes, sir.”
“At the machinists and the engineers and the electricians and the mechanics and the foundry-men and the laborers and the painters—at everybody. You will look at them. But what I want you to see is men.”
“Human beings?”
Thompson nodded. Then he said: “Four weeks. Do you know Milton?”
Tommy tried to recall.
Thompson added: “John—poet.”
“We read him—”
“You don't know him. I have found him of great value in automobile manufacturing.”
Thompson said this so seriously that Tommy, instead of smiling, was filled with admiration for Thompson, who went on, gravely: “He even had in mind the particular job of Mr. Thomas Leigh—Paradise Lost, Eighth Book. For your special benefit he wrote:
“'To know
That which before us lies in daily life
Is the prime wisdom'
“Report to me in one month.” And Mr. Thompson turned to his mail.
Tommy left the room full of admiration for Mr. Thompson and of misgivings about Mr. Thomas Leigh. He couldn't see very far ahead, so he went to his old desk in the information bureau, sat down and made up his mind to get back to first principles, as Mr. Grosvenor always preached.
Mr. Thompson had said that Tommy must continue to be a college boy; therefore, it was plain that for some reason, not quite so plain, Mr. Thompson wished to get reports from a college boy. Then that he must look at the workmen and see the human beings. By having no theories about Thompson's motives and by not trying to make himself into any kind of expert, he would be able to obey orders. The truth! Thompson was paying for it; Thompson would get it from Thomas F. Leigh.
For days Tommy wandered about from place to place, unable to speak to most of his fellow-employees, who were too busy to indulge in heart-to-heart talks with the official college boy who was studying them. At lunch-time it was easier to mix with them as he wished, and he ate out of his lunch-pail as if he were one of them. But there seemed to be a barrier between them and himself, chiefly, he again decided, because his job did not classify—and, therefore, they could not take him into full membership. Moreover, his interest was in listening rather than in talking, and that was almost fatal to perfect frankness, for they didn't know why he was so interested in everything they did and said. They did not quite regard him as a spy, but he was not a blood brother. It was only when they began to tease him and to make clear his abysmal ignorance of their business, and to poke fun at him in all sorts of ways, that the ice was broken. He accepted it all so good-naturedly and was so sincerely anxious to be friends that in the end they took him in. Some of them even told him their troubles.
Bill kept on working away at his experiments at home after shop hours, with the usual violent changes in his moods. One evening after a particularly explosive outburst, which ended by his shaking a clenched fist at the carburetor, Bill shouted:
“I'll make you do it yet, dodgast ye!”
“Bill,” said Tommy, seriously, “tell your partner what the trouble is. Begin at the beginning and use words of one syllable.”
“What good will that do, you poor college dude?”
“Well, it will enable me to give you a d—d good licking with a free conscience,” said Tommy. “Did you never hear how often inventors' wives have suggested the way out by means of the little door labeled Common Sense? It is inThe Romances of Great Inventors.”
“Well, if you can find the way out of this you are a wonder.”
“I am. Go on.” Bill looked at Tommy, who went on, cheerfully, “Be a sport; loosen up.” After a moment Bill spoke calmly, “You know heat is not enough to effect the perfect vaporization of the kerosene.”
“What would be the effect of passing a whopper of an electric current direct through the kerosene before you do anything else?”
Tommy, as he said this, looked as wise as a woman does when she offers advice because having no knowledge she can give no commands.
“I don't know,” said Bill, indifferently. Then he repeated, “I don't know,” less indifferently. Then he shouted: “I don't know, but, by heck, I'm going to find out! Now get out of here!”
“Will it explode?” asked Tommy.
“No. But I can't work with anybody round me.”
“Why can't you? Honestly now.”
“Well,” said Bill, “I feel like a fool when I fail, and I have a rotten temper, and—and—” Bill hesitated; then his face flushed.
“Then what?” asked Tommy, curiously. “Well, I'm fond of you and I don't want to have a fight when I'm out of my head. Now will you go or will you stay?”
“I'll go. If I ever landed on the point of the chin—” And shaking his head dolefully, Tommy shook hands with Bill and left.
There was always his automobile. He took Mrs. Clayton out for a joy-ride.
A few days later Bill said to Tommy at breakfast: “Your new high-tension generator is a wonder. I can get a very high-frequency current—”
“You can?” interrupted Tommy, with a frown. He did this merely to encourage Bill, who thereupon explained:
“Of course I'm using a step-up transformer with it, and something has happened!”
“Certainly”; and Tommy nodded wisely. He added: “I expected it to. But you can't use that kind of generator on cars, can you?”
“Oh, we'll have no trouble about the generator once I get what I'm after.”
“Sure of that?”
“Oh yes,” said Bill, gloomily.
“Then what's the trouble?” asked Tommy, alarmed by Bill's look.
“I certainly do get the vaporization all right, all right.”
“Great Scott! isn't that what you wanted?”
“Yes.”
“Then we've got it!”
“Yes, but I don't know what does it,” said Bill in despair.
“No smoke?” persisted Tommy.
“Not a darned bit. The inside of the engine was clean as a whistle.” Bill shook his head and frowned as at very unpleasant news.
“Well,” observed Tommy, thoughtfully, “something has happened!”
“Indeed?” Bill looked very polite.
“You don't know what, and I don't, either. Therefore—” Tommy paused for effect.
Bill's elaborate sarcasm failed him. “Go on, you idiot!” he shouted.
“Therefore, I will find out!” announced Tommy.
“Ask La Grange and have him cop the whole cheese!”
“No, William. You admit we've got to know what happens, don't you?”
“Certainly. Otherwise, what will I get a patent on?”
Tommy realized in a flash that Bill might have stumbled upon something that would have far-reaching results on everybody concerned as well as on the industry. What was now needed was plain to him.
“William,” he said, slowly, “I will go to an altruist.”
“A what?”
“A college professor. We must prepare a lot of questions to ask and we will get his answers. And then we must check up the answers by actual experiment. See?”
“No, I don't. But I see very clearly that if you give away—”
“You make me tired,” said Tommy, pleasantly. “It's the suspicious farmer who always buys the gold brick. What we need now is knowledge. We'll go to one of those despised beings who have nothing to live for but to know.”
“But I tell you that if you go blabbing—”
“We won't blab; he will. He loves to. He will make us rich by his speech, and then he will thank us for having so patiently listened to his lecture, and for doing him the honor of transmitting his thousands of hours of study into thousands of dollars of cash for ourselves. That is his reward, and we shall grant it to him unhesitatingly as befits captains of industry. Bill, about all I got out of college was to know where to go for information. Now don't talk. Look at the clock. Eat!”
At dinner-time they again talked about it. That night Bill ran his engine for Tommy's benefit. He took a power test and showed Tommy a number of pieces of paper which Bill said were “cards.” They meant nothing to Tommy, but Bill asserted they were great; and this confirmed Tommy's judgment that the wise thing to do was to consult one of those experts whose delight it is to clear those mysteries that have nothing to do with the greatest mystery of all—moneymaking. On the next day he asked guarded questions of La Grange and others, and gathered from their answers that W. D. Jenkins, of the Case School at Cleveland, was the great authority on the subject. So Tommy wrote to Professor Jenkins asking for an interview, and while he waited for the answer asked Williams, one of the Tecumseh lawyers, all about patents and patent lawyers and the troubles of inventors, and, above all, the mistakes of inventors. From him he learned about the vast amount of patent litigation that might have been averted if the inventors and their lawyers had only gone about their business intelligently. Tommy realized that he must get the best lawyer available. Williams spoke very highly of exactly three of his patent colleagues in the United States. The nearest was Mr. Hudson Greene Kemble, at Cleveland, where Professor Jenkins lived.
When he spoke to Bill about it Bill asked: “How do you know he is straight? If he is so smart, won't he see what a big thing—”
“You still talk like the wise rube before he acquires three and a half pounds of brass for two hundred and eighty dollars. A first-class professional man doesn't have to be a crook to make money. Suppose we've got to get what they call a basic patent? Don't you see it takes a first-class man to fence it in so that we can keep all that is coming to us, not only to-day but years from now when it comes to be used in ways and places we don't even suspect at this moment? And inventors don't always know the real reason why their invention works.”
Tommy was really quoting from Williams, the company's lawyer, but he looked so wisely business-like that Bill grudgingly admitted:
“I guess you're right. But where is the money coming from? That's where most inventors give up the lion's share—at the beginning.”
“I don't know,” said Tommy, thoughtfully; “but I do know I'm going to get it without money.”
“If you can do that—”
“What else can we do, you bonehead? We have no money and we must have some light.” When Professor Jenkins's answer came Tommy and Bill, with their list of questions all ready and the carburetor carefully packed, asked for a day off and traveled by night to Cleveland. In Professor Jenkins's office Tommy introduced himself and Bill with an ease and fluency that Bill envied. Professor Jenkins appeared intelligently interested. It was to Bill that he turned and asked: “What is it you have, young man?”
“I—we have a kerosene-carburetor that works like a charm,” answered Bill.
“Is that so?”
The professor did not speak skeptically, but Bill said, defiantly: “It gives perfect combustion, and we can start the engine cold even better than with gasoline. Peach!”
“Lots of people are working on that.”
“Yes, sir; but you never saw one that did what ours does.”
“What's the difference between yours and the others?”
Bill hesitated.
“Tell him,” said Tommy, frowning.
“I don't know anything about the others except that they don't work.”
“Show it to him,” commanded Tommy.
Bill aimed a look at his partner, making clear who would be to blame if somebody else got a patent on the selfsame carburetor, and then slowly unwrapped the package. With his child before him Bill became loquacious, and he began to explain it to the professor, who listened and asked question, most of which Bill answered. Occasionally he said, “I don't know,” and then Tommy would interject, “But it works, Professor Jenkins.”
Bill could not tell how high a voltage he was using nor the kind of transformer.
“The man I bought it from said it was a six-to-one transformer. There is no marking on it.”
The professor smiled, asked more questions, and finally Bill confessed that it didn't work above nine hundred revolutions.
“When we speed her up she begins to smoke like—”
“She does smoke pretty badly,” interjected Tommy.
“Why?” asked Jenkins.
“Damfino!” said Bill, crossly. It had been a source of exasperation to him.
“That is what we are here to find out, sir,” put in Tommy, deferentially.
“I've tried every blamed thing I could think of,” said Bill. “If I only knew why she works below nine hundred I might make it work when I speed her up.”
“H'm!” The professor was thinking over what Bill had told him. Then he said: “Well, you evidently are using a very high current. I suspect there must be some ionization there.” He paused. Then, more positively: “I think you undoubtedly are ionizing the vapor. That would account for what results you say you are getting.”
“What is it that happens?” asked Bill, eagerly.
Professor Jenkins delivered a short lecture on the ionization of gases, a subject so dear to his heart that when he saw how absorbingly they listened he took quite a personal liking to them. He suggested a long series of tests and experiments, which Tommy jotted down in his own private system of Freshman shorthand. At one of them Bill shook his head so despairingly that Professor Jenkins told him, kindly:
“If you care to have us make any of the tests for which you may lack the proper appliances, we shall be glad to undertake them for you here.”
“We can't tell you how grateful we are,” said Tommy, perceiving that the end of the talk had come. “And please believe me when I tell you that although we are not millionaires now, we hope you will let us consult you professionally from time to time, and I promise you, sir, that I—we—I—''
“Mr. Leigh, I shall be glad to help you. And”—Jenkins paused and laughed—“my fee can wait. Let me hear from you how you make out with the heavier oils. Mr. Byrnes's device is very ingenious. I think you are in a very interesting field.”
“Do you happen to know Mr. Hudson G. Kemble, the patent lawyer?”
“Very well. Is he interested in your work?”
“Not yet,” said Tommy; “but we expect him to be our legal adviser.”
“Couldn't go to a better man. By the way, he is an alumnus of your college, class of '91, I think.”
“Then he must be what you say he is,” smiled Tommy, happily, while Bill looked on more amazed than suspicious at the friendliness of the conversation.
Outside Bill and Tommy talked about it, until
Bill said, “That's what happens, all right, all right—ionization!”
“Sure thing!” agreed Tommy. “But we must make some more tests—”
“Naw! I want to cinch this thing. Let's hike to the lawyer. Come on; we haven't got time to waste.”
They looked up Mr. Kemble's address in the telephone-book. Luck was with them. Mr. Kemble was not very busy and could see them at once. They were ushered into his private office.
“Mr. Kemble,” said Tommy, so pleasantly that for a moment Bill thought they were old friends, “your name was suggested to us by Mr. Homer Williams, of Dayton. Professor Jenkins, of the Case School, also told us we could not go to a better man. I have no letters of introduction, but can you listen to us two minutes?”
Kemble looked into Tommy's eyes steadily, appraisingly. Then he looked at Bill, his glance resting on the package Bill carried under his arm—the precious carburetor.
“I'll listen,” said Kemble, not over-encouragingly.
Tommy looked at him full in the face—and liked it. Kemble reminded him of Thompson. The lawyer also was plump and round-faced and steady-eyed. He impressed Tommy as being less interested in all phases of human nature than Thompson, slightly colder, more methodical, less imaginative, more concerned with exact figures. The mental machinery was undoubtedly efficient, but worked at a leisurely rate and very safely—a well-lubricated engine.
“First, we have no money—now.”
Tommy looked at Mr. Kemble. Mr. Kemble nodded.
“Second, we think we have a big thing.”
Tommy again looked at Mr. Kemble. This time Mr. Kemble looked at Tommy and did not nod. Bill frowned, but Tommy went on, pleasantly:
“Everybody that comes here doubtless thinks the same thing.”
“Every inventor,” corrected Mr. Kemble.
“But we have just left Professor Jenkins, of the Case School of Applied Science.”
“What did he say?” asked Mr. Kemble.
“He was very much interested. He has a theory, which we must prove by a long series of experiments he wants us to make.” Tommy paused.
“Go on!” said Kemble, frowning slightly, as if he did not relish a story in instalments. Bill bit his lip, but Tommy smiled pleasantly and went on:
“Mr. Kemble, we have no money, but kindly consider this: We went to Professor Jenkins for science. We have come to you for legal advice. Therefore, we have not done what ordinary fool inventors would do. Whatever your fee may be we'll pay—in time. You will have to risk it. But now is the time for you to say whether you want to hear any more or not.”
“And if I don't?”
“Then we'll go back and save up money until we can return to this same office with the cash. That means that some one else may beat us to the Patent Office. We think we have a big thing—so big that it needs the best patent lawyer we can get. Do you still want to take our case?”
Kemble looked at Tommy's eager face a moment. Then he smiled and said: “I'll listen, and then I'll tell you what I'll do. I may or I may not take your case, for you may or you may not have a patent.”
“This”—and Tommy pointed to Bill—“is the inventor, William S. Byrnes. I am merely a friend—”
“And partner!” interjected Bill. “Share and share alike!”
“That's for later consideration,” said Tommy.
“No, it's for now—fifty-fifty,” said Bill, pugnaciously.
“I shouldn't quarrel about the division of the spoils if I were you,” suggested Mr. Kemble. “Fool inventors always do. Suppose we first find out whether it's worth quarreling about?”
“Go on, Bill; you tell him,” said Tommy, and he began to study the notes he had taken about the points Professor Jenkins had emphasized.
“Well,” said Bill, confidently, “we've got a kerosene-carburetor that works all right.”
“All the time? Under all conditions?” asked Kemble, leaning back in his chair with a suggestion of resignation.
Bill did not like to admit at the very outset that his own child misbehaved above nine hundred revolutions.
“Well, you see, I'll tell you what we've got.” And Bill proceeded to do so. From time to time Tommy interrupted to read aloud from his notes. Then Mr. Kemble began, and Bill was more impressed by the lawyer's questions than he had been by the scientist's, for they were the questions Bill felt he himself would have asked a brother inventor. In the end he admitted almost cheerfully that it didn't do so well when the engine ran above nine hundred revolutions. He was sure the high currency ionized the gas, but he somehow had not got it to ionizing fast enough.
“Lots of engines,” he finished, defensively, “don't run any faster than that.”
“How much have you actually used this thing?” asked Kemble, coming back to Bill's own.
“On the bench. But we've tried it out pretty well,” answered Bill. He produced his cards.
Kemble studied them.
“And it starts cold!” said Bill.
“Is that so?” Kemble looked up quickly at Bill, for the first time appearing to be really interested.
“Yep!” he said, triumphantly.
Since they thought this a very important point, Tommy asked the lawyer, “Could we get a patent on that?”
“Yes, if it's new,” answered Kemble.
“Sure it's new. There isn't any other in the market,” said Bill.
“That's a fact,” chimed in Tommy.
“I'll have to look into that,” said the patent lawyer, calmly.
“If there was any patent, people would be using it, wouldn't they?” challenged Bill, unaware that all inventors make the same point at their first interview with their patent lawyers.
“That may be true,” was all that Kemble would admit.
“What do you need besides this,” asked Bill, pointing to his carburetor, “to file an application for a patent?”
“Well, you'd better leave that here and find out what your dynamo and transformer are. In fact, I think you'd better send them on to me. That would be the easiest way. When did you first run this?”
After some guessing, Bill told him.
“You ought to keep a careful date record.”
“What's that for?”
“As a record of your priority in case somebody else has the same thing.”
“We've got the priority all right,” Bill assured him. All inventors always are sure of it.
Tommy, who had begun to fidget uneasily, now asked Kemble, “About how much is this going to cost us?”
Kemble shook his head and smiled. “I can't tell you now. It depends upon the experiments you make and the results you get.”
“Can't we file an application now to protect ourselves?” persisted Tommy, who knew how uneasy Bill felt about it.
“Yes, I could do that. But I'd like to see Jenkins first. You'd better plan to spend about two hundred and fifty dollars—” Kemble stopped talking when he saw the consternation on both boys' faces. He had been rather favorably impressed with them. He added, “Well, you send me the generator and the transformer, and when I know more about it I'll let you know more definitely.”
“If I am going to make the experiments, how can I send them to you?”
“I'll return them to you, and you can make your experiments after that.”
“Mr. Kemble,” asked Tommy, “when shall we be safe in talking to an outsider about this?”
“You'd better wait until the application is filed,” answered the lawyer.
“Thank Heaven we came to you,” said Tommy, fervently. “We are fellow-alumni. Professor Jenkins told me you were '91. I am '14. I've met Mr. Stuyvesant Willetts. He was '91, I think?”
“Yes, I remember him,” said Mr. Kemble, with a new interest.
Tommy was on the verge of saying that Stuyvesant Willetts's nephew Rivington was his chum; but all he said was:
“His nephew was in my class. I am with the Tecumseh Motor Company in Dayton. And so is Byrnes here. Do you know Mr. Thompson?” asked Tommy.
“Yes,” said Mr. Kemble.
“Then,” said Tommy, determinedly, “I am about to pay you the biggest compliment you'll ever get from a human being. Mr. Kemble, you remind me of Mr. Thompson!”
“Yes,” said Kemble, “we are so different.”
“Not so different as you think,” contradicted Tommy. “Do you take our case?”
“Yes.”
“You see, I was right,” laughed Tommy, and held out his hand. After a barely perceptible hesitation Mr. Kemble took it. “Thank you, sir. Come on, Bill, Mr. Kemble has all we've got.” They returned to Dayton excited rather than elated. Bill contended there was no need of additional proof, and that there was no sense in making the experiments that Professor Jenkins had suggested. Six months with an equipment they did not have put it out of the question. Tommy, not knowing exactly what to say, told Bill that the experiments would fix exactly what happened and how and why, and that they must be made. But Bill in his mind was equipping a car with his kerosene-carburetor, planning certain modifications in the position of the tank, and trying to install a generator that would do for the self-starter as well as for the ionization of the kerosene. He thought he saw how he could do all these things; therefore his amiability returned.
And Tommy began to think that the seventeen thousand dollars might be paid off much sooner than he had expected. But in the next breath he decided that a wise man has no right to look for miracles. Therefore, he would not build castles in the air. Certainly not! But he couldn't help thinking of his father's joy—not his own, but his father's—when the seventeen thousand dollars should be paid back.
No wisdom in counting your chickens prematurely. Certainly not! But what a day of days that would be! In the mean time he must not allow himself to feel too sure. Poor old dad!