"I guess it's all up with us," said Sidney Kalin despairingly.
"It looks that way," admitted his brother, Albert Kalin.
The father, Jonas Kalin, sat at his desk with his head half-buried in
his hands.
"There is no chance for an extension, of course," he said wearily.
"I should say not," returned Sidney. "Telmer bought up the mortgage for
just one purpose, and his only hope of success lies in foreclosing. He
wants to get his hands on the invention."
"Will he take an interest in the business?" asked Jonas.
"Why should he, when he can get the only thing he wants without?"
returned Sidney.
"What does Dempsey say?" persisted the senior Kalin.
"It's out of his line," answered Albert, to whom the question was
addressed. "If five thousand would straighten the thing out, he might
risk it, but he wouldn't put up a cent more than that, and he'd want a
twenty-five per cent. interest in the business for that sum."
"And, if we can save it, the thing is worth a fortune," groaned Jonas.
"We've got a start already, and there's almost no limit to the
possibilities. It ought to be worth fifty thousand a year inside of
three years. He doesn't want much."
"Well, he's out of the question, anyway," said Sidney. "We've got to
have twenty-five thousand, and we've got to have it mighty soon."
"My life insurance is more than that," mused Jonas.
"What good does that do?" retorted Sidney rather sharply. "Even if you
wanted to surrender it, the cash surrender value is less than ten
thousand at the present time."
"That would help," argued Jonas.
"Nothing will help that doesn't put the full sum needed within our
reach," asserted Albert. "We're about due to begin life over again with
a little less than nothing."
"I'll think it over," said Jonas, rising and wearily reaching for his
hat. "I've always weathered the storms before. Perhaps I'll find a way
to weather this one."
Jonas Kalin once had been accounted a successful real estate man, but he
had lost a good deal of money in speculation, and the time and thought
he gave to speculation had had an injurious effect upon his business.
One of the sons had been for a time in the employ of a manufacturer of
fountain pens. Later the elder Kalin had started both boys, as an
independent firm, in that line of business, their pen differing
sufficiently from others to avoid any infringement of patents on
patented features. They had made no great amount of money, indeed barely
a living income, but they had kept out of debt until Sidney invented a
machine for finishing the shell or case of the pen.
His experiments had been rather costly, and the machine had been costly
to construct, but he had convinced his father that it was a good thing,
and Jonas had given up his dwindling real estate business and put what
money he had left into his sons' firm, becoming a partner in the
enterprise. Even then it had been found necessary to borrow twenty-five
thousand dollars in order to establish the business on the new and
larger basis, giving a mortgage on the entire plant, which included the
new machine, and this mortgage had passed into the hands of a more
prosperous business rival at a time when the value of the invention was
just becoming apparent. This invention largely reduced the cost of
production, but the exploiting so far done, although expensive and
reasonably successful, had not enabled the Kalins to accumulate anything
to meet their obligation. Indeed, believing they would have no
difficulty in securing an extension, they had not worried about this
until they found themselves in the power of a rival.
The machine had not been patented, for reasons that most successful
inventors will readily understand. While a patent is supposed to protect
the inventor, it does not do so in many instances; on the contrary, it
frequently gives a rival just the information he needs to duplicate the
device with technical variations that will at least make the question of
infringement a difficult one to decide. The inventor of limited means,
opposed by a company with almost unlimited capital, is at a serious
disadvantage when he gets into the courts, and there are cases where the
value of an invention has been largely destroyed by having the market
flooded with the article before the legal rights can be definitely
determined. There is hardly a single patented device of great value that
has not been the basis of long and costly litigation, involving either
the unauthorized use or manufacture of the device as it is or the use or
manufacture of a device suggested by the original and differing from it
only enough to give technical plausibility to the plea that it is not an
infringement. Even the great Edison is reported to have said that he has
made practically no money on his patents, but has had to enter the
manufacturing business to get any material benefit from his inventions.
"When you patent an invention," the Kalins had been informed by a man of
experience in such matters, "you are furnishing ammunition to the enemy.
You are giving him your secret, and he will put some smart men at work
to discover some method of using it himself. Edison is still busy with
inventions, but you don't see his name in the patent reports any more.
He has become too wise for that. Secrecy is the best protection,
provided you have something that can be kept secret."
All this Jonas Kalin reviewed as he walked slowly and with bowed head
toward his club. They had kept their invention secret, they had
advertised extensively, and now, just as they were beginning to get
returns on their investment, the dream was shattered. They had tried to
interest various capitalists, but capitalists could not see the future
as they saw it. Capital is exceptionally conservative when there is a
question of investing in inventions that it does not understand, for
inventors are proverbially optimistic and not infrequently cost capital
a good deal of money.
"Thirty thousand dollars of life insurance!" muttered Jonas, as he
settled himself in a corner of the reading-room. "If we could have the
use of that money for a year we would be all right."
Jonas was a widower, but his wife had been living when he had taken out
this insurance. Now it would go to the sons eventually, if they survived
him, but, meanwhile, they would lose a fortune. Since the death of his
wife, Jonas had given his every thought to the boys and their future. He
reproached himself for the speculations that had deprived him of the
power of helping them as he had planned in earlier days; he felt that
somehow he had defrauded them. So deeply did he feel this that from the
day he gave up his real estate business he never had put one dollar into
a speculation of any kind, except so far as his investment in their
business was a speculation.
"If we could make that go," he mused, as he crouched miserably in the
big chair, "I should be content. I owe it to the boys to see them fairly
started. I was in a position to do it once and I lost the money
foolishly--their money, by rights, for I had put it aside for them. And
here am I, almost useless--a business wreck--too old to begin again as an
employee and lacking the capital to be an employer or to do business of
any sort for myself. Instead of helping my boys, I am to be a burden to
them--until I die. I am of value only in the grave." He shuddered and
seemed to sink still lower in the chair. "It is my duty to do what I can
for them," he added. "I am useless, but life is before them--a
continuation of my life. I must be a success through my sons."
Benson, a friend, stopped near him.
"What's the matter, Kalin?" asked Benson. "You look blue."
Kalin looked up at Benson in a dazed way, and for a moment seemed to be
unable to grasp the fact that he had been addressed.
"Benson," he said at last, his eyes wandering dreamily about the room,
"is a man ever justified in committing suicide?"