The High Calling Part 19

"But he makes you a purely business proposition. Can't you trust him to handle it?"

"Oh, I suppose so, I never knew of his being dishonest. And you know the old proverb: 'Wer lugt, der stiehlt auch'; 'show me a liar and I'll show you a thief.' His faults were always of a different sort. But you can see how I would naturally hesitate to correspond with him or have any dealings with him."

"I think you are wrong about that," said Walter positively. "This is a purely business affair. You ought to treat it as such. He can handle the matter for you, being on the ground, far better than you can do it through correspondence at this distance."

"Do you think so?"

"I know it. If I were in your place I wouldn't hesitate a minute. You are totally at the mercy of the manufacturers unless you can make them understand your ability to take care of yourself. Isn't it true that the great majority of inventors die poor? The manufacturers make the money, not the inventors."

"That's true. But I don't want to die poor. I won't die poor. I have not the ambition of a Carnegie or a Rockefeller."

"You need a good friend at Washington to protect your interests. My!

Won't it be great if your incubator should make you rich! I don't know why it shouldn't. The way the chickens hatched out of it was wonderful.

Just think, old man. Most everyone nowadays has electricity in his house. Thousands of people could just as well as not be raising chickens on the side. Ministers, doctors, college professors, newspaper men, lawyers, school teachers,--no end. The sun would never set on your incubator any more than hens have to. I tell you, old man, there's money in your electric birds if you manage the business end of this thing right. And I don't see why your father's offer isn't just--well, providential."

"I never knew anything about him to be 'providential,'" said Bauer in almost the only bitter tone Walter had ever known him to use. "But I don't want to take any chances on this. Perhaps he is sent along at this time to help me out."

Walter looked curiously at his friend.

"You seem to be awfully anxious to make money, Felix. Never knew you that way before. What you going to do? Get married? And start a chicken ranch?"

Over Bauer's face a great flood of colour swept. There was one confidence he had determined never to make to Walter, and that was his feelings towards Helen. He believed Walter had no hint of it. And as a matter of fact that was true. Walter had so far had no love experiences and Bauer had never by so much as a look or a word in Walter's presence betrayed his secret.

"I don't expect to get married. At least not very soon," Bauer managed to say. "But I want money. You can borrow of me," he added with one of his rare smiles, "if you need it for your own nuptials."

"No immediate need," said Walter, laughing. "I have never seen the girl my mother would like to welcome."

"Ah! Your mother. But she would be kind to the girl you would choose."

"Or the one that would choose me, you mean. I don't know. Mother would be pretty particular about the people that got into the Douglas family.

Did I ever mention old man Damon who came around courting Helen last winter. He wears a wig and deals in rubber goods. Old enough to be Helen's father. I never saw mother so upset. And as for Helen--why--I would as soon think of her taking you for a suitor as Damon. But you never can tell what a girl will do. They generally do the opposite of what you expect."

Bauer managed to say--"That's fortunate for some of us perhaps. Else there might be no hope for unfortunate and homely people if there was any fixed rules by which girls acted."

Walter stared at Bauer as he sometimes had to when Bauer opened his philosophy unexpectedly.

"I wonder what will happen to you, old man, when you fall in love, really and deeply?"

"I wonder," said Bauer softly.

"It will be interesting to watch you," said Walter laughing.

"Same to you," said Bauer with some spirit.

"We can watch each other," Walter continued.

"I have no doubt you will bear watching," was Bauer's reply, wrung from him by the tense situation.

Walter roared, and did not venture to say any more on that subject. But he went on to urge Bauer to answer his father's letter at once and give him power of attorney to act for him and make the best possible terms for his invention. Bauer promised before he left the room to do so, and on reaching his own room he at once set to work on the difficult business of answering his father on purely business grounds. Without making any definite promises or giving his father any authority to act for him, with characteristic caution he asked several questions about the patent laws, and especially about the possibility of undertaking the manufacture of the incubators on shares. He enclosed the letters he already had received from companies interested, none of which however had made him any positive offer, only sounding him in general as to his disposition to sell the patent rights on certain terms which had no very promising prospects of ready money. And it was money Bauer wanted,--not dim future prospects of the all-powerful medium of happiness or unhappiness.

After his letter had been mailed, he felt a little uncertain about it all, but he was of a direct, straight-forward habit and once started in a course of action he seldom changed it. Once committed to the correspondence with his father he would hold to it, keeping it all on a cold business basis as if his father had no other relation to him, and letting the heartache take care of itself. It is astonishing how many heartaches do take care of themselves in this old world. Only, like Bauer's, they are apt to take care of themselves so poorly that the ache starves the heart out of house and home.

Two days later, Walter, who was in his room going over some complicated formulae connected with Rausch's Dynamics, was interrupted by Bauer who came running in from his room across the hall waving a little slip of paper.

"What do you think of that," he exclaimed with unusual excitement.

Walter looked at the little yellow slip and read "One Thousand Dollars payable to Felix Bauer by Halstead, Burns & Co., of Washington."

"They offer me that for my patent right, with a small percentage of profit on certain sales."

Walter was excited in his turn and started to offer congratulations. But Bauer's next words broke in on him.

"I'm going to send the check back. It's not enough and they know it."

"I believe you're right," said Walter, after a stare at Bauer in this new light of money hunger. "The fact that they sent a check shows their eagerness to get into the business and their faith in its value. What will you hold them up to?"

"I don't know. But I am going to put the matter up to--to him."

"You mean your father?"

"Yes," said Bauer hastily. "The more I think of it the more I believe he can get more than I can. I'll mail him Halstead's correspondence."

That same afternoon Bauer returned the check to Halstead, Burns, & Co.

with a brief business note saying that he was not prepared to sell out at such a small figure. He added that he had placed the business connected with the patent in the hands of his father, giving street number and office. In the same mail he sent his father Halstead's letter and told of his return of the check, at the same time authorising his father to have full power to act for him with Halstead or any other firm.

"I do not know just what I ought to receive for my patent." Bauer wrote.

"But I am not going to act hastily nor sell at a sacrifice. I trust you to make terms that will at least be some measure of the real value of the article."

A week pa.s.sed by during which time Bauer's father wrote acknowledging Bauer's letters, thanking him for accepting his offer, commending his action in returning the check to Halstead, Burns & Co., and a.s.suring Felix that the business would receive prompt and careful attention.

A week later as Walter and Bauer were in the shop a telegraph messenger came in with an envelope for Felix Bauer.

Bauer opened and read and without a word pa.s.sed the message over to Walter. It read, "Halstead offers $5,000 cash down and percentage on American sales. Shall I close with offer? Adolph Bauer."

Walter could hardly speak--he was so excited.

"Better close with it. You can't do better. That father of yours must be a------"

Bauer smiled faintly. "Perhaps I can't expect more. I believe I will wire accept."

"Better find out what the percentage is, and why European sales are not included."

"Yes," said Bauer briefly. He was strangely calm and not particularly overjoyed by his unexpected good fortune. Walter recalled that afterwards.

He answered the telegram with a letter, asking for details which his father furnished promptly. The European sales were subject to such expense and delay that the manufacturers explained the unusual risk and made a plausible showing why royalty terms were difficult to arrange.

After two weeks correspondence, Bauer finally telegraphed his father-- "You are authorised to close with Halstead on their terms. Take your commission out of the $5,000."

By the business arrangements made between them Bauer's father was to receive five per cent on any cash offer. Bauer felt kindly towards him for the way the affair had come out and in a letter written the same day he sent the telegram he authorised his father to take out ten per cent commission instead of the five agreed upon in their formal contract.