o back us.
Of course he'll get his whack of whatever we make, and if he likes to be
the nominal owner of some bonus shares in our company he can. That would
regularise his position. The way the thing stands is this."

I had finished my breakfast and lit a cigar. Gorman pulled out his pipe
and sat down opposite to me. I am not, I regret to say, a business man,
but I succeeded in understanding fairly well what he told me.

His brother's cash register, if properly advertised and put on the
market, would drive out every other cash register in the world. In the
long run nothing could stand against it. Of that Gorman was perfectly
convinced. But the proprietors of the existing cash registers would not
submit without a struggle.

Gorman nodded gravely when he told me this. Evidently their struggles
were the very essence of the situation.

"What can they do?" I said. "If your machine is much better than theirs
surely----"

"They'll do what people always do on these occasions. They'll infringe
our patents."

"But the law----"

"Yes," said Gorman, "the law. It's just winning law suits that would
ruin us. Every time we got a judgment in our favour the case would be
appealed to a higher court. That would happen here and in England and
in France and in every country in the world civilised enough to use cash
registers. Sooner or later, pretty soon too--we should have no money
left to fight with."

"Bankrupt," I said, "as a consequence of your own success. What an odd
situation!"

"Now," said Gorman, "you see where Ascher comes in.

"I do. But I don't expect he'll spend his firm's money fighting
speculative law suits all over the world just to please you."

"You don't see the position in the least. There'll be no law suits and
he won't spend a penny. Once it's known that his firm is behind us no
one will attempt to touch our patent. People aren't such fools as to
start playing beggar-my-neighbour with Ascher, Stutz & Co. The whole
world knows that their firm has money enough to go on paying lawyers
right on until the day of judgment."

"I hope to goodness," I said, "that we shan't meet lawyers then."

Gorman smiled. Up to that point it had been impossible to move him from
his desperate earnestness, but a joke at the expense of lawyers is sure
of a smile under any circumstances. With the possible exception of the
mother-in-law joke, the lawyer joke is the oldest in the world and like
all well tested jokes it may be rel