Hale frowned. "The radio companies are pretty tough customers, being hooked up with General Motors and people like that. Are you sure they couldn't string the litigation out indefinitely?"
"Not a chance. They can delay a little, of course, and that might be serious to somebody who didn't have the $10,000 that a normal infringement suit takes. But they can only stall for so long, and then we'll have them. Want me to go ahead with a preliminary investigation?"
"Yeah, sure, go ahead, Mr. Janos. Let me know."
"Oh, of course, Mr. Hale. You don't have to tell me that."
THE FIRST really hot evening, Gloria enjoyed lolling in a lawn chair on the terrace, and Eugene Banner relaxed completely. But Hale's tortured mind kept turning to the Burkes and why they weren't happy. After all, he asked himself, what did they have before? A monotonous routine: up at five, sweep, scrub, shovel coal, make beds, argue rent out of people as poor as themselves, dispossess tenants with no place to go, make all the repairs in the house — all day and half the night, seven days a week, for just enough to keep them from going hungry.
Did they like that? Impossible! Then what was it? Well, no friends, discomfort in their elegant apartment; and you know how snobbish the well-to-do are: they haven't the easy friendliness of the poor, nor the self-confidence of the very rich, who can afford to make all kinds of friends.
Damn it, was that really the answer? If it was, how about all the people who make small fortunes? There were always plenty of them, rising from nothing. They managed to get by.
"Mighty nice up here," said Banner. "You can almost forget the trouble down below."
"What trouble?" asked Hale inattentively.
"Shaky market, factories closing, unemployment —"
"Oh, that," said Hale gloomily.
Banner sat up. "`Oh, that'? What the hell have you got to worry about that's bigger than the mess this country's in? Where do you come off, saying, `Oh, that'?"
Hale didn't hear him. He thought: maybe it was his fault the Burkes were unhappy; the result of an error like that with his own spell. No, that couldn't be. He had told Johnson he had wanted the Burkes made happy, and Johnson had managed the whole thing.
Banner was shaking his arm. "What the devil's the matter with you, son? You're not the same shrewd, obstinate guy who busted into my office and said he wanted to marry my daughter. Come on, speak up!"
"I don't know what's the matter with him, daddy," Gloria complained. "Only this morning he was so full of life —"
"I'm all right," grumbled Hale. "Just some business worries." He thought, and went on cautiously: "When I got that partnership with Johnson, I bit off a little more than I expected."
It was partly true. The Southwestern Tech deal had gone off with the greatest of ease; the radio manufacturers had given in to the threat of an infringement suit without a struggle. The institute now had enough money to keep its uranium research program going for years. But Hale found his enjoyment of this new triumph somewhat tepid. In an effort to take his mind off the Burkes, he had been thinking about his plan for keeping Bispham and his newspapers afloat. He had found the man to locate and rope his sucker: a Prince Igor Vershinin, who was a customers' man-female customers — for Titus, Farnsworth and Quinn, and who had assured Hale that nothing would be easier, for, of course, an appropriate consideration.
Banner resumed his seat. "That's it, is it? Can't say I blame you, with things the way they are. Say, you're usually pretty well posted. What do you think'll be the outcome?"
"Of what?"
"I mean, which way'll the country jump?"
"How should I know?"
"That's what everybody says. You know, Bill, it's enough to scare anyone out of reaching into his pocket. Isolation's all right — you can make real money at it, selling to both sides — but you got to depend on staying neutral. Get what I mean?"
"Yeah."
"Suppose you're an exporter. Until you know whom you can collect from, you're not going to sell to either side and take a chance of bad debts or embargoes. Or suppose you make automobiles. In case of war your plant'll be converted into an airplane factory, maybe. But if the country stays isolationist, you can go on making cars without changing all your equipment. Like this, though, you don't dare make either cars or airplanes, for fear of being stuck with a fortune in half-processed materials.
"Look here, Bill, I'm not a stubborn guy. I can see both sides. Either isolation or intervention would be a good thing, if we'd only decide on it." His voice rose to an agitated howl. "But for Pete's sake, let's make up our minds! This waiting around's what's putting capital in a panic, throwing people out of work, torturing the whole country!"
Hale squirmed uneasily. "Is it really making you so unhappy?"
"You bet it is! Advertising increases when sales drop. I haven't done so well since '32. But so help me, Bill, I'd cut my business to half of my lowest year if it'd mean getting rid of this ... this suspense!"
Hale thought, Johnson would have assumed a mournful air of sympathy, but gloated inside. Why shouldn't he, Hale, gloat? But the knowledge of his success in making the hemisphere miserable merely depressed him and intensified his unreasonable sense of failure.
He stood up and clenched his fists for a moment. Then he sagged again. Whom was he defying? He was absolute ruler of half the world, accountable to nobody.
"Yeah, you're right," said Banner. "I'm tired, too. I'll run along and let you kids get to sleep."
Hale felt a warm, soft hand steal into his. He stood it as long as he could, then disengaged it as gently as his disgust would allow. Couldn't Gloria, the damned little fool, see his agitation?
HALE THREW the newspapers on the floor, and punched the pillows behind him so he could sit up.
"Aren't you going to sleep, Billie-willie?" Gloria asked plaintively. He ignored her. Panic, fear, anxiety — why didn't the papers have sense to shut up?
"Billie-willie, can't you do your thinking in the morning?"
"Please be quiet and go to sleep," he said tensely.
She blinked a tear out of her eye. "You don't love me any more!"
"I do." He heaved over on his side, with his back to her. This time he wasn't going to be wheedled out of thinking. Listening to her suppressed sobs couldn't possibly add to his unhappiness.
His unhappiness? He had tricked Lucifer into making him a partner for the express purpose of making himself happy. He had appropriated everything he thought necessary to that end. Then why should he be wretched?
And why should the Burkes be unhappy with all the means of avoiding that state?
Was anybody happy? His father-in-law wasn't, despite his huge success in the advertising business. His new tool, Vershinin, wasn't, despite a good job with Hale's stockbrokers and the prospect of a fat commission when he had nailed Hale's picture-buying sucker. The Russian ‚migr‚ was a likable enough chap, despite a broad streak of woolly mysticism. But his associates regarded him as a sort of glorified gigolo. Hale had guessed that Vershinin hotly resented this, but could do nothing about it; he could no more shed his accent and his manner than he could shed his skin.