Part 4 (1/2)

I had finished my breakfast and lit a cigar. Gorman pulled out his pipe and sat down opposite to me. I am not, I regret to say, a business man, but I succeeded in understanding fairly well what he told me.

His brother's cash register, if properly advertised and put on the market, would drive out every other cash register in the world. In the long run nothing could stand against it. Of that Gorman was perfectly convinced. But the proprietors of the existing cash registers would not submit without a struggle.

Gorman nodded gravely when he told me this. Evidently their struggles were the very essence of the situation.

”What can they do?” I said. ”If your machine is much better than theirs surely----”

”They'll do what people always do on these occasions. They'll infringe our patents.”

”But the law----”

”Yes,” said Gorman, ”the law. It's just winning law suits that would ruin us. Every time we got a judgment in our favour the case would be appealed to a higher court. That would happen here and in England and in France and in every country in the world civilised enough to use cash registers. Sooner or later, pretty soon too--we should have no money left to fight with.”

”Bankrupt,” I said, ”as a consequence of your own success. What an odd situation!”

”Now,” said Gorman, ”you see where Ascher comes in.

”I do. But I don't expect he'll spend his firm's money fighting speculative law suits all over the world just to please you.”

”You don't see the position in the least. There'll be no law suits and he won't spend a penny. Once it's known that his firm is behind us no one will attempt to touch our patent. People aren't such fools as to start playing beggar-my-neighbour with Ascher, Stutz & Co. The whole world knows that their firm has money enough to go on paying lawyers right on until the day of judgment.”

”I hope to goodness,” I said, ”that we shan't meet lawyers then.”

Gorman smiled. Up to that point it had been impossible to move him from his desperate earnestness, but a joke at the expense of lawyers is sure of a smile under any circ.u.mstances. With the possible exception of the mother-in-law joke, the lawyer joke is the oldest in the world and like all well tested jokes it may be relied on.

”There won't be any lawyers then,” said Gorman. ”They'll go straight to h.e.l.l without the formality of a trial.”

This seemed to me to be carrying the joke too far. I have known several lawyers who were no worse than other professional men, quite upright and honourable compared to doctors. I should have liked to argue the point with Gorman. But for the moment I was more interested in the future of the new cash register than in the ultimate destiny of lawyers.

”If you get Ascher to back you,” I said, ”and your patents are safe, you'll want to begin making machines on a big scale. Where will you get the money for that?”

”You haven't quite caught on yet,” said Gorman. ”I don't want to make the things at all. Why should I? There would have to be a large company.

I have neither time nor inclination to manage it. Tim hasn't that kind of brains. Besides it would be risky. Somebody might come along any day with a better machine and knock ours out. People are always inventing things, you know. What I want is a nice large sum of hard cash without any bother or risk. Don't you see that the other people, the owners of the present cash registers, will have to buy us out? If our machine is the best and they daren't go to law with us they must buy us out.

There's no other course open to them. What's more, they'll have to pay pretty nearly what we ask. In fact, if we put up a good bluff there's hardly any end to the extent to which we can bleed them. See?”

I saw something which looked to me like a modernised form of highway robbery.

”Is that sort of thing common?” I said.

”Done every day,” said Gorman. ”It's business.”

”Well,” I said, ”there's one justification for your proceedings. If half what you say about your brother's invention is true the world will get the benefit of a greatly improved cash register. I suppose that's the way civilisation advances.”

”The world be d.a.m.ned,” said Gorman. ”It'll get nothing. You don't suppose the people who buy us out are going to start making Tim's machine. They can if they like, of course, once they've paid us. But it will cost them hundreds of thousands if they do. They'd have to sc.r.a.p all their existing plant and turn their factories inside out, and in the end they wouldn't make any more profit than they're making now. No.

They'll simply suppress Tim's invention and the silly old world will go on with the machines it has at present.”

”Gorman,” I said, ”you gave me to understand a minute or so ago that you went in for the old-fas.h.i.+oned kind of soul, the kind we were both brought up to. I'm not at all sure that I wouldn't rather have Mrs.

Ascher's new kind, even if it----”

”Don't start talking about begonias again,” said Gorman.