At a regular meeting of the board of directors, held this date, it was voted to terminate all your connection (other than as stockholder) with the corporation, as permitted under paragraph three of your contract. It is requested that you stay off company property. Your personal papers and belongings will be forwarded to you by safe means.
- The board wishes to thank you for your services and regrets the differences in policy opinion which have forced this step on us.
Sincerely yours,
Miles Gentry
Chairman of the Board and General Manager by B. S. Darkin, Sec'y-Treasurer
I read it twice before I recalled that I had never had any contract with the corporation under which to invoke paragraph three or any other paragraph.
Later that day a bonded messenger delivered a package to the motel where I kept my clean underwear. It contained my hat, my desk pen, my other slide rule, a lot of books and personal correspondence, and a number of documents. But it did not contain my notes and drawings for Flexible Frank.
Some of the documents were very interesting. My 'contract,' for example-sure enough, paragraph three let them fire me without notice subject to three months' salary. But paragraph seven was even more interesting. It was the latest form of the yellow-dog clause, one in which the employee agrees to refrain from engaging in a competing occupation for five years by letting his former employers pay him cash to option his services on a first- refusal basis; i.e., I could go back to work any time I wanted to just by going, hat in hand, and asking Miles and Belle for a job-maybe that was why they sent the hat back.
But for five long years I could not work on household appliances without asking them first. I would rather have cut my throat.
There were copies of assignments of all patents, duly registered, from me to Hired Girl, Inc., for Hired Girl and Window Willie and a couple of minor things. (Flexible Frank, of course, had never been patented-well, I didn't think he had been patented; I found out the truth later.)
But I had never assigned any patents, I hadn't even formally licensed their use to Hired Girl, Inc.; the corporation was my own creature and there hadn't seemed to be any hurry about it.
The last three items were my stock-shares certificate (those I had not given to Belle), a certified check, and a letter explaining each item of the check-accumulated 'salary' less thawing-account disbursements, three months' extra salary in lieu of notice, option money to invoke 'paragraph seven'... and a thousand dollar bonus to express 'appreciation of services rendered.' That last was real sweet of them.
While I reread that amazing collection I had time to realize that I had probably not been too bright to sign everything that Belle put in front of me. There was no possible doubt that the signatures were mine.
I steadied down enough the next day to talk it over with a lawyer, a very smart and money-hungry lawyer, one who didn't mind kicking and clapper-clawing and biting in the clinches. At first he was anxious to take it on a contingent-fee basis. But after he finished looking over my exhibits and listening to the details he sat back and laced his fingers over his belly and looked sour. 'Dan, I'm going to give you some advice and it's not going to cost you anything.'
'Well?'
'Do nothing. You haven't got a prayer.'
'But you said-'
'I know what I said. They rooked you. But how can you prove it? They were too smart to steal your stock or cut you off without a penny. They gave you exactly the deal you could have reasonably expected if everything had been kosher and you had quit, or had been fired over-as they express it-a difference of policy opinion. They gave you everything you had coming to you... and a measly thousand to boot, just to show there are no hard feelings.'
'But I didn't have a contract! And I never assigned those patents!'
'These papers say you did. You admit that's your signature. Can you prove what you say by anyone else?'
I thought about it. I certainly could not. Not even Jake Schmidt knew anything that went on in the front office. The only witnesses I had were... Miles and Belle.
'Now about that stock assignment,' he went on, 'that's the one chance to break the log jam. If you...'
'But that is the only transaction in the whole stack that really is legitimate. I signed over that stock to her.'
'Yes, but why? You say that you gave it to her as an engagement present in expectation of marriage. Never mind how she voted it; that's beside the point. If you can prove that it was given as a betrothal gift in full expectation of marriage, and that she knew it when she accepted it, you can force her either to marry you or to disgorge. McNulty vs. Rhodes. Then you're in control again and kick them out. Can you prove it?'
'Damn it, I don't want to marry her now. I wouldn't have her.'
'That's your problem. But one thing at a time. Have you any witnesses or any evidence, letters or anything, which would tend to show that she accepted it, understanding that you were giving it to her as your future wife?'
I thought. Sure, I had witnesses... the same old two. Miles and Belle.
'You see? With nothing but your word against both of theirs, plus a pile of written evidence, you not only won't get anywhere, but you might wind up committed to a Napoleon factory with a diagnosis of paranoia. My advice to you is to get a job in some other line... or at the very most go ahead and buck their yellowdog contract by setting up a competitive business-I'd like to see that phraseology tested, as long as I didn't have to fight it myself. But don't charge them with conspiracy. They'll win, then they'll sue you and clean you out of what they let you keep.' He stood up.
I took only part of his advice. There was a bar on the ground floor of the same building; I went in and had a couple or nine drinks.
I had plenty of time to recall all this while I was driving out to see Miles. Once we had started making money, he had moved Ricky and himself to a nice little rental in San Fernando Valley to get out of the murderous Mojave heat and had started commuting via the Air Force Slot. Ricky wasn't there now, I was happy to recall; she was up at Big Bear Lake at Girl Scout camp-I didn't want to chance Ricky's being witness to a row between me and her stepdaddy.
I was bumper to bumper in Sepulveda Tunnel when it occurred to me that it would be smart to get the certificate for my Hired Girl stock off my person before going to see Miles. I did not expect any rough stuff (unless I started it), but it just seemed a good idea... like a cat who has had his tail caught in the screen door once, I was permanently suspicious.
Leave it in the car? Suppose I was hauled in for assault and battery; it wouldn't be smart to have it in the car when the car was towed in and impounded.
I could mall it to myself, but I had been getting my mail lately from general delivery at the G.P.O., while shifting from hotel to hotel as often as they found out I was keeping a cat.
I had better mail it to someone I could trust.
But that was a mighty short list.
Then I remembered someone I could trust.
Ricky.
I may seem a glutton for punishment to decide to trust one female just after I had been clipped by another. But the cases are not parallel. I had known Ricky half her life and if there ever was a human being honest as a Jo block, Ricky was she... and Pete thought so too. Besides, Ricky didn't have physical specifications capable of warping a man's judgment. Her femininity was only in her face; it hadn't affected her figure yet.
When I managed to escape from the log jam in Sepulveda Tunnel I got off the throughway and found a drugstore; there I bought stamps and a big and a little envelope and some note paper. I wrote to her:
Dear Rikki-tikki-tavi,
