ied on.

"There won't be any lawyers then," said Gorman. "They'll go straight to
hell without the formality of a trial."

This seemed to me to be carrying the joke too far. I have known several
lawyers who were no worse than other professional men, quite upright and
honourable compared to doctors. I should have liked to argue the point
with Gorman. But for the moment I was more interested in the future of
the new cash register than in the ultimate destiny of lawyers.

"If you get Ascher to back you," I said, "and your patents are safe,
you'll want to begin making machines on a big scale. Where will you get
the money for that?"

"You haven't quite caught on yet," said Gorman. "I don't want to make
the things at all. Why should I? There would have to be a large company.
I have neither time nor inclination to manage it. Tim hasn't that kind
of brains. Besides it would be risky. Somebody might come along any day
with a better machine and knock ours out. People are always inventing
things, you know. What I want is a nice large sum of hard cash without
any bother or risk. Don't you see that the other people, the owners of
the present cash registers, will have to buy us out? If our machine
is the best and they daren't go to law with us they must buy us out.
There's no other course open to them. What's more, they'll have to pay
pretty nearly what we ask. In fact, if we put up a good bluff there's
hardly any end to the extent to which we can bleed them. See?"

I saw something which looked to me like a modernised form of highway
robbery.

"Is that sort of thing common?" I said.

"Done every day," said Gorman. "It's business."

"Well," I said, "there's one justification for your proceedings. If half
what you say about your brother's invention is true the world will get
the benefit of a greatly improved cash register. I suppose that's the
way civilisation advances."

"The world be damned," said Gorman. "It'll get nothing. You don't
suppose the people who buy us out are going to start making Tim's
machine. They can if they like, of course, once they've paid us. But it
will cost them hundreds of thousands if they do. They'd have to scrap
all their existing plant and turn their factories inside out, and in
the end they wouldn't make any more profit than they're making now. No.
They'll simply suppress Tim's invention and the silly old world will go
on with the machines it has at present."

"Gorman," I said, "you gave me to