'Go ahead.'
I put up a counterproposal, one that had been growing in my mind. I wanted us to get out of production. Jake Schmidt, our production shop master, was a good man; nevertheless I was forever being jerked out of a warm creative fog to straighten out bugs in production-which is like being dumped out of a warm bed into ice water. This was the real reason why I had been doing so much night work and staying away from the shop in the daytime. With more war-surplus buildings being moved in and a night shift contemplated I could see the time coming when I would get no peace to create, even though we turned down this utterly unpalatable plan to rub shoulders with General Motors and Consolidated. I certainly was not twins; I couldn't be both inventor and production manager.
So I proposed that we get smaller instead of bigger-license Hired Girl and Window Willie, let someone else build and sell them while we raked in the royalties. When Flexible Frank was ready we would license him too. If Mannix wanted the licenses and would outbid the market, swell! Meantime, we'd change our name to Davis & Gentry Research Corporation and hold it down to just the three of us, with a machinist or two to help me jackleg new gadgets. Miles and Belie could sit back and count the money as it rolled in.
Miles shook his head slowly. 'No, Dan. Licensing would make us some money, granted. But not nearly the money we would make if we did it ourselves.'
'Confound it, Miles, we wouldn't be doing it ourselves; that's just the point. We'd be selling our souls to the Mannix people. As for money, how much do you want? You can use only one yacht or one swimming pool at a time... and you'll have both before the year is out if you want them.'
'I don't want them.'
'What do you want?'
He looked up. 'Dan, you want to invent things. This plan lets you do so, with all the facilities and all the help and all the expense money in the world. Me, I want to run a big business. A big business. I've got the talent for it.' He glanced at Belle. 'I don't want to spend my life sitting out here in the middle of the Mojave Desert acting as business manager to one lonely inventor.'
I stared at him. 'You didn't talk that way at Sandia. You want out, Pappy? Belle and I would hate to see you go... but if that is the way you feel, I guess I could mortgage the place or something and buy you out. I wouldn't want any man to feel tied down.' I was shocked to my heels, but if old Miles was restless I had no right to hold him to my pattern.
'No, I don't want out; I want us to grow. You heard my proposal. It's a formal motion for action by the corporation. I so move.'
I guess I looked puzzled. 'You insist on doing it the hard way? Okay, Belle, the vote is `no.' Record it. But I won't put up my counterproposal tonight. We'll talk it over and exchange views. I want you to be happy, Miles.'
Miles said stubbornly, 'Let's do this properiy. Roll call, Belle.'
'Very well, sir. Miles Gentry, voting stock shares number-' She read off the serial numbers. 'How say you?'
'Aye.'
She wrote in her book.
'Daniel B. Davis, voting stock shares number-' She read off a string of telephone numbers again; 1 didn't listen to the formality. 'How say you?'
'No. And that settles it. I'm sorry, Miles.'
'Belle S. Darkin,' she went on, 'voting shares number-' She recited figures again. 'I vote `aye.''
My mouth dropped open, then I managed to stop gasping and say, 'But, baby, you can't do that! Those are your shares, sure, but you know perfectly well that-'
'Announce the tally,' Miles growled.
'The `ayes' have it. The proposal is carried.'
'Record it.'
'Yes, sir.'
The next few minutes were confused. First I yelled at her, then I reasoned with her, then I snarled and told her that what she had done was not honest-true, I had assigned the stock to her but she knew as well as I did that I always voted it, that I had had no intention of parting with control of the company, that it was an engagement present, pure and simple. Hell, I had even paid the income tax on it last April. If she could pull a stunt like this when we were engaged, what was our marriage going to be like?
She looked right at me and her face was utterly strange to me. 'Dan Davis, if you think we are still engaged after the way you have talked to me, you are even stupider than I've always known you were.' She turned to Gentry. 'Wifi you take me home, Miles?'
'Certainly, my dear.'
I started to say something, then shut up and stalked out of there without my hat. It was high time to leave, or I would probably have killed Miles, since I couldn't touch Belle.
I didn't sleep, of course. About 4 A.M. I got out of bed, made phone calls, agreed to pay more than it was worth, and by five-thirty was in front of the plant with a pickup truck. I went to the gate, intending to unlock it and drive the truck to the loading dock so that I could run Flexible Frank over the tail gate-Frank weighed four hundred pounds.
There was a new padlock on the gate.
I shinnied over, cutting myself on barbed wire. Once inside, the gate would give me no trouble, as there were a hundred tools in the shop capable of coping with a padlock.
But the lock on the front door had been changed too.
I was looking at it, deciding whether it was easier to break a window with a tire iron, or get the jack out of the truck and brace it between the doorframe and the knob, when somebody shouted, 'Hey, you! Hands up!'
I didn't put my hands up but I turned around. A middie-aged man was pointing a hogleg at me big enough to bombard a city. 'Who the devil are you?'
'Who are you?'
'I'm Dan Davis, chief engineer of this outfit.'
'Oh.' He relaxed a little but still aimed the field mortar at me. 'Yeah, you match the description. But if you have any identification on you, better let me see it.'
'Why should I? I asked who you are?'
'Me? Nobody you'd know. Name of Joe Todd, with the Desert Protective & Patrol Company. Private license. You ought to know who we are; we've had you folks as clients for the night patrol for months. But tonight I'm on as special guard.'
'You are? Then if they gave you a key to the place, use it. I want to get in. And quit pointing that blunderbuss at me.'
He still kept it leveled at me. 'I couldn't rightly do that, Mr. Davis. First place, I don't have a key. Second place, I had particular orders about you. You aren't to go in. I'll let you out the gate.'
'I want the gate opened, all right, but I'm going in.' I looked around for a rock to break a window.
'Please, Mr. Davis . .
'Huh?'
'I'd hate to see you insist, I really would. Because I couldn't chance shooting you in the legs; I ain't a very good shot. I'd have to shoot you in the belly. I've got soft-nosed bullets in this iron; it'ud be pretty messy.'
I suppose that was what changed my mind, though I would like to think it was something else; i.e. when I looked again through the window I saw that Flexible Frank was not where I had left him.
As he let me out the gate Todd handed me an envelope. 'They said to give this to you if you showed up.'
I read it in the cab of the truck. It said:
Dear Mr. Davis,
18 November, 1970
