The Best Policy

“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?”

Benson was startled, but he replied promptly and emphatically, “Never.”

“Suppose,” Kalin went on, “that your life intervened between those you love and happiness; suppose that your life meant misery and failure for them, while your death meant success and – and comfort.”

Benson drew up a chair and placed his hand on Kalin’s arm as if to emphasize his words.

“The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away,” he quoted earnestly. “Life is God’s gift and should be treasured as such. You may not return it until He calls, unless you would doubt His wisdom.”

Kalin nodded his head thoughtfully.

“Men have gone to certain death for those they love and been glorified for so doing,” he argued.

“A man may give his own life to save the life of another and be a hero,” returned Benson, “but he may not take his own life for any cause and be aught but a coward.”

“What matters it whether he takes it or gives it, so long as the purpose is the same?” asked Kalin.

Benson gripped the arm on which his hand lay and shook Kalin.

“Wake up!” he commanded sharply. “What’s the matter with you to-day?”

Kalin roused himself, as if from a dream, and laughed in a forced, dreary way.

“Nothing is the matter with me,” he replied. “I must have been reading something that gave my thoughts a morbid turn. Still, your reasoning seems to be that of a man who never has been tested. Your view has been my view, but I can see how a man’s views may change when he is confronted by the actual conditions concerning which he has previously only theorized. I don’t think you’re right.”

“It’s a disagreeable subject, even for abstract consideration,” asserted Benson. “Let’s drop it.”

“All right,” said Kalin. “I’m going in to lunch.”

In the dining-room he got into an obscure corner and the waiter had to joggle his elbow to rouse him from the reverie into which he immediately fell. Then, after barely tasting the lunch he ordered, he went to the office of the club and asked that all charges against him be footed up.

“There’s nothing against me at all now?” he said inquiringly as he paid the bill.

“Nothing at all, sir,” replied the clerk.

“I’d hate to leave any club debts,” he remarked, as if talking aloud to himself.

At his office he found his sons still gloomily discussing the situation.

“I think,” he said, “that I have found a way to save the business.”

“How?” they asked eagerly.

“The details are not quite clear in my mind yet,” he replied. “I would like to give them a little more thought before explaining the matter. But, if I succeed in pulling you through, you boys must be mighty careful in the future. A concern doesn’t get out of this kind of hole twice, and I’m going to turn it all over to you.”

“Why?” asked Albert in surprise.

“I ruined one business,” was the reply. “One is enough. Be cautious. Go slow. You’ve got a good thing – a fortune – if you handle your finances properly and don’t try to spread out too fast.”

He shook hands with both the boys, to their great bewilderment.

“Where are you going?” asked Sidney. “One would think you were starting on a long journey.”

“I’m taking leave of the business,” he answered, with a laugh that had something of pathos in it. “I’m going to shut myself up for a day or so until I get my little scheme elaborated, and then you shall have the benefit of it, but I am out of active business.”

Sidney and Albert were silent for some time after he had left. Jonas Kalin always had been a rather eccentric man, and they were accustomed to letting his whims and peculiarities of word and action pass without comment, but there was something in this parting that made them feel uncomfortable.

“I don’t like it,” remarked Sidney. “I wonder if the worry and disappointment have been too much for him.”

“It is a hard blow to him – not for himself, but for us,” returned Albert. “However, we’ll see him this evening.”

Mrs. Albert Kalin was the housekeeper for the three men. Sidney, being a bachelor, had always lived with his father, but Albert had married and moved away from the parental roof. Then, when his mother died, Jonas had called him back and practically turned the house over to him and his wife, reserving only one large room for himself. In this he had his own little library, and to this he frequently retired for long evenings of solitude, for, while not a recluse, he was a man who really needed no other companionship than his own thoughts and often seemed to avoid the society of others.