The immediate business was the systematic exploitation of the fact that
Trafford had worked out the problem of synthesizing indiarubber. He had
done so with an entire indifference to the commercial possibilities of
the case, because he had been irritated by the enormous publicity given
to Behrens' assertion that he had achieved this long-sought end. Of
course the production of artificial rubbers and rubber-like substances
had been one of the activities of the synthetic chemist for many years,
from the appearance of Tilden's isoprene rubber onward, and there was
already a formidable list of collaterals, dimethybutadiene, and so
forth, by which the coveted goal could be approached. Behrens had boldly
added to this list as his own a number of variations upon a theme of
Trafford's, originally designed to settle certain curiosities about
elasticity. Behrens' products were not only more massively rubber-like
than anything that had gone before them, but also extremely cheap to
produce, and his bold announcement of success had produced a check in
rubber sales and widespread depression in the quiveringly sensitive
market of plantation shares. Solomonson had consulted Trafford about
this matter at Vevey, and had heard with infinite astonishment that
Trafford had already roughly prepared and was proposing to complete and
publish, unpatented and absolutely unprotected, first a smashing
demonstration of the unsoundness of Behrens' claim and then a lucid
exposition of just what had to be done and what could be done to make an
indiarubber absolutely indistinguishable from the natural product. The
business man could not believe his ears.
"My dear chap, positively--you mustn't," Solomonson had screamed, and
he had opened his fingers and humped his shoulders and for all his
public school and university training lapsed undisguisedly into the
Oriental. "Don't you _see_ all you are throwing away?" he squealed.
"I suppose it's our quality to throw such things away," said Trafford,
when at last Solomonson's point of view became clear to him. They had
embarked upon a long rambling discussion of that issue of publication, a
discussion they were now taking up again. "When men dropped that idea of
concealing knowledge, alchemist gave place to chemist," said Trafford,
"and all that is worth having in modern life, all that makes it better
and safer and more hopeful than the ancient life, began."
"My dear fellow," said Solomonson, "I know, I know. But to give away the
synthesis of rubber! To just shove it out of the window into the street!
_Gare l'eau!_ O! And when you could do with so much too!"....
Now they resumed the divergent threads of that Vevey talk.
Solomonson had always entertained the warmest friendship and admiration
for Trafford, and it was no new thing that he should desire a business
co-operation. He had been working for that in the old days at Riplings;
he had never altogether let the possibility drop out of sight between
them in spite of Trafford's repudiations. He believed himself to be a
scientific man turned to business, but indeed his whole passion was for
organization and finance. He knew he could do everything but originate,
and in Trafford he recognized just that rare combination of an obstinate
and penetrating simplicity with constructive power which is the
essential blend in the making of great intellectual initiatives. To
Trafford belonged the secret of novel and unsuspected solutions; what
were fixed barriers and unsurmountable conditions to trained
investigators and commonplace minds, would yield to his gift of magic
inquiry. He could startle the accepted error into self-betrayal. Other
men might play the game of business infinitely better than
he--Solomonson knew, indeed, quite well that he himself could play the
game infinitely better than Trafford--but it rested with Trafford by
right divine of genius to alter the rules. If only he could be induced
to alter the rules secretly, unostentatiously, on a business footing,
instead of making catastrophic plunges into publicity! And everything
that had made Trafford up to the day of his marriage was antagonistic to
such strategic reservations. The servant of science has as such no
concern with personal consequences; his business is the steady,
relentless clarification of knowledge. The human affairs he changes, the
wealth he makes or destroys, are no concern of his; once these things
weigh with him, become primary, he has lost his honour as a scientific
man.
"But you _must_ think of consequences," Solomonson had cried during
those intermittent talks at Vevey. "Here you are, shying this cheap
synthetic rubber of yours into the world--for it's bound to be cheap!
any one can see that--like a bomb into a market-place. What's the good
of saying you don't care about the market-place, that _your_ business is
just to make bombs and drop them out of the window? You smash up things
just the same. Why! you'll ruin hundreds and thousands of people, people
living on rubber shares, people working in plantations, old, inadaptable
workers in rubber works...."
Sir Rupert was now still a little incredulous of Trafford's change of
purpose, and for a time argued conceded points. Then slowly he came to
the conditions and methods of the new relationship. He sketched out a
scheme of co-operation and understandings between his firm and Trafford,
between them both and his associated group in the city.
Behrens was to have rope and produce his slump in plantation shares,
then Trafford was to publish his criticism of Behrens, reserving only
that catalytic process which was his own originality, the process that
was to convert the inert, theoretically correct synthetic rubber, with a
mysterious difference in the quality of its phases, into the real right
thing. With Behrens exploded, plantation shares would recover, and while
their friends in the city manipulated that, Trafford would resign his
professorship and engage himself to an ostentatious promotion syndicate
for the investigation of synthetic rubber. His discovery would follow
immediately the group had cleared itself of plantation shares; indeed he
could begin planning the necessary works forthwith; the large scale
operations in the process were to be protected as far as possible by
patents, but its essential feature, the addition of a specific catalytic
agent, could be safely dealt with as a secret process.
"I hate secrecy," said Trafford.
"Business," interjected Solomonson, and went on with his exposition of
the relative advantages of secrecy and patent rights. It was all a
matter of just how many people you had to trust. As that number
increased, the more and more advisable did it become to put your cards
on the table and risk the complex uncertain protection of the patent
law. They went into elaborate calculations, clerks were called upon to
hunt up facts and prices, and the table was presently littered with
waste arithmetic.
"I believe we can do the stuff at tenpence a pound," said Solomonson,
leaning back in his chair at last, and rattling his fountain pen between
his teeth, "so soon, that is, as we deal in quantity. Tenpence! We can
lower the price and spread the market, sixpence by sixpence. In the
end--there won't be any more plantations. Have to grow tea.... I say,
let's have an invalid dinner of chicken and champagne, and go on with
this. It's fascinating. You can telephone."
They dined together, and Solomonson on champagne rather than chicken.
His mind, which had never shown an instant's fatigue, began to glow and
sparkle. This enterprise, he declared, was to be only the first of a
series of vigorous exploitations. The whole thing warmed him. He would
rather make ten thousand by such developments, than a hundred thousand
by mere speculation. Trafford had but scratched the surface of his mine
of knowledge. "Let's think of other things," said Sir Rupert Solomonson.
"Diamonds! No! They've got too many tons stowed away already. A diamond
now--it's an absolutely artificial value. At any time a new discovery
and one wild proprietor might bust that show. Lord!--diamonds! Metals?
Of course you've worked the colloids chiefly. I suppose there's been
more done in metals and alloys than anywhere. There's a lot of other
substances. Business has hardly begun to touch substances yet, you know,
Trafford--flexible glass, for example, and things like that. So far
we've always taken substances for granted. On our side, I mean. It's
extraordinary how narrow the outlook of business and finance is--still.
It never seems to lead to things, never thinks ahead. In this case of
rubber, for example----"
"When men fight for their own hands and for profit and position in the
next ten years or so, I suppose they tend to become narrow."
"I suppose they must." Sir Rupert's face glowed with a new idea, and his
voice dropped a little lower. "But what a pull they get, Trafford, if
perhaps--they don't, eh?"
"No," said Trafford with a smile and a sigh, "the other sort gets the
pull."
"Not _this_ time," said Solomonson; "not with you to spot processes and
me to figure out the cost--" he waved his hands to the litter that had
been removed to a side table--"and generally see how the business end of
things is going...."
BOOK THE THIRD
MARJORIE AT LONELY HUT