"But if it isn't on my list, how can you be so sure I'll like it?"
Patrick smiled. "We've never lost a customer."
"Probably it will be very similar to a trademark on my list."
Patrick picked up the list and scanned it briefly. "No, I think not. But we're wasting time. Let's move on to the next item."
"Next item?"
"Payment."
"Charge my department."
"You don't quite understand, Harvey. Let's go over it again. I'm promising you a clean, desirable trademark. I'm giving you a guarantee—on something that as yet doesn't even exist. I don't have to do it. This is above and beyond the call of duty. A big favor to you."
"So?"
"If the company gets sued, you're in the clear, but it's a black eye for me. They'll say Hope needs a younger man in their Patent Department. Patrick is slipping. And then the next time it happens, I'm out on my ear. So I'm taking a chance, and I want payment."
Jayne was suspicious. "Like what?"
"We need not be crass. You could offer a prize for a suitable mark."
"And you would win it?"
"The Patent Department would win it."
"Go on," said Jayne acidly.
"The prize couldn't be money."
"I can see that. As you say, crass. How about wall-to-wall carpeting?"
"No."
"A conference room . . ."
"Not that, either."
"Electric typewriters . . ."
"Not exactly what I had in mind."
"Then what do you want?"
Patrick leaned over and murmured, "Willow."
Jayne was silent for a moment. Finally he said, "I don't know what to say. It's cheap, shoddy, not in character with you, Con. Furthermore, I don't make the rules. This promotion program is a company policy. It's not anything you or I have anything to do with. I need a secretary. I have a vacancy. I either fill it by promoting a girl from the lab, or I go outside. I think it's a good policy."
"So do I," said Patrick morosely. "I hate to do this."
"You don't have to do it. In fact, you're being absolutely unreasonable. If you insist on doing this to me, I'll have to take it up with Andrew Bleeker."
"If you do that, you could get me in trouble."
"As you say, I would hate to have to do it."
"At the same time, you will also have to mention to Bleeker that you couldn't get the Manual out in time for the Board. You won't have to tell him why, though. He'll be first on my list of carbons of my trademark infringement report to you. He will not be happy."
The room became very quiet. The pale drift of typewriters ebbed and flowed in the outer bays.
Jayne's restraint was massive. "You win."
"Thank you, Harvey. And now, just so we won't have any misunderstandings, when Miss Willow comes back to us from having been your secretary, she'll keep her double raise?"
"I thought that she was never leaving you. How can she come back to you?"
"It's all over the place, Harvey, that she's being transferred to you. If we kept her here, she'd be entitled to think that we cheated her out of a raise. So we have to get her transferred to you on the books, get her double raise, and then transferred back to us on the books. Physically, of course, there would seem to be no reason for her to transfer . . . that is, clean out her desk, or anything like that."
"So that not only I don't get a secretary, Willow gets two raises."
"But you get a clean bill of health for your manual."
"And a good trademark?"
"Absolutely." Patrick was solemn. "We can pick one here and now. We guarantee we can get the trademark application on file this afternoon. All we need is a more exotic name—one not made out of these garden variety building units. A really beautiful name."
Cord picked up the cue. "How about some foreign words that mean beautiful?"
"Well, there's a thought. Harvey, what do you think?"
Jayne shrugged his shoulders. "Like what?"
"Pulchra—Latin for 'pretty,' " said Cord.
"Hard to do anything with it," said Patrick. "What else?"
"Kallos—'beautiful' in Greek."
Patrick looked doubtful.
"Bel?" said Cord.
"That's a little better. What is it in Italian?"
"Bella."
"Still not quite right," said Patrick.
"You could take a big jump. 'Beautiful' in German is schoen. You'd have to Anglicize the accent a little, give it a long a."
"Ah yes. 'Shane.' Shane! " Patrick's eyes lit up. "I really like that. Harvey?"
"Not bad. 'Shane.' Hm-m-m. Yes, I must admit, there's something about it. Something tantalizing."
"I hear it, too, Harvey."
Cord's eyes rolled upward briefly.
"How long will it take to search it out in the Washington trademarks?" demanded Jayne.
"We can do it this afternoon. My man will call in, any minute now, and we'll tell him to go ahead."
"I'll take it,"said Jayne.
"Good enough. If it's clear in the Trademark Division, we'll get the application on file this afternoon."
Jayne looked surprised. "You'll have to have labels made up. Then you'll have to make a bona fide sale in interstate commerce.
And then have the trademark application executed by Andy Bleeker. I don't think you can do all that in three hours. And I won't pay off on a phony."
"Of course not." Patrick smiled angelically as the other left.
In the early afternoon Patrick walked across the court to the terpineol pilot plant and into the cramped dusty office of John Fast. As he stepped inside, his eyes were drawn immediately across the cubicle, beyond Fast's desk, to a large painting, in black and white, hanging on the wall behind Fast. He poised at the doorway, slack-jawed, staring at this . . . thing.
Within the plain black frame were two figures, one large, and, in front, a smaller. The outlines of the larger figure seemed initially luminous, hazy, then, even as he squinted, perplexed and uneasy; the lines seemed to crystallize, and suddenly a face took form, with eyes, a mouth, and arms. The arms were reaching out, enfolding the figure in front, a man wearing a medieval velvet robe and feathered beret.
Unaccountably, Patrick shivered. His eyes dropped, and found themselves locked with those of John Fast, unquestioning, waiting.
Fast murmured, "It is an oversize reproduction of Harry Clarke's pen-and-ink drawing, the end-piece of Bayard Taylor's translation of Goethe."
"What is it?" blurted Patrick.
"Mephistopheles, taking Faust,'' said John Fast.
Patrick took a deep breath and got his voice under control. "Very effective." He paused. "John, I'm here to ask a favor."
Fast was silent.
"I understand you have a certain skill in the art of hypnosis."
Fast's great dark eyes washed like tides at Patrick. "That's not quite the right word. But perhaps the result is similar."
"I'll come to the point. All this is highly confidential. Our basic terpineol patent application is in interference in the Patent Office. We intend to dissolve the interference by a motion contending that the interference count is unpatentable over the prior art. This prior art is a college thesis. The problem is, Paul Bleeker is the only one who has seen the thesis, and he can't remember anything about it. Is it possible for him to remember, under hypnosis?"
"It's possible," said Fast, "but by no means a certainty."
"But isn't it true that everyone records, somewhere on his cerebrum, everything he has ever experienced?"
"Possibly. But that doesn't necessarily mean we can remember it all. Recall is a complicated process. The theory in fashion today is the 'see-all-forget-nearly-all!' theory. In this one, every bit of incoming sensation is recorded and filed away in your subconscious. But to bring it up again, you not only have to call for it, you also have to walk it out, holding it by the hand, chopping along with a mental machete to clear away all the subconscious blocks along it
s path. Persistence will turn up many a forgotten item in this way. But if it's quite old, there may be so many blocks that it will never be able to penetrate the conscious mind. In this case you have to get down there with it, in your far subconscious—take a good look at it, and then holler out to somebody what you see. Hypnosis is the accepted procedure. In the hands of an expert, all kinds of oddities can be turned up in this way: stimuli the subject barely had time to receive; or things, which, if recalled on a conscious level, would be intolerable."
"I want you to try it on Paul Bleeker tonight."
Fast hesitated a moment. "I gather you renamed Neol?"
Patrick's eyebrows arched. "Yes. How did you know?"
"It was best for your patents, and you always do what's best for your patents."
" 'Neol' was a poor trademark," said Patrick doggedly. "That was the only reason we changed."
"What is the new name?" asked Fast.
And now Patrick hesitated. He found himself unwilling to answer this question. Suddenly, he almost disliked John Fast. He shook himself. "Shane," he said curtly.
Tiny iridescent lights seemed to sparkle from somewhere deep in the eyes of the other.
"Well?" demanded Patrick.
"Exquisite," murmured Fast. "I will do this thing for you. It may involve something more than hypnotism. You understand that, don't you?"
"Of course."
"No, you don't. You can't, at least not yet. But no matter. If Paul is willing, I will do it for you anyway. Since you are totally committed, it cannot be otherwise."
Those who have lost an infant are never, as it were, without an infant child. They are the only persons who, in one sense, retain it always.
Leigh Hunt
Andrew Bleeker swung his swivel chair slowly back and forth as he motioned to the two chairs nearest his desk.
Patrick said cheerfully, "Good afternoon, Andy."
Harvey Jayne grunted. He was not cheerful.
Bleeker's eyes flickered broodingly at Patrick's face. He had a horror of these nasty internecine arguments. Patrick beamed back, and Bleeker sighed. "I'll come to the point, Con. There seems to be some question about the way you handled Harvey's Neol manual."
"Really? I realize I wasn't able to satisfy him completely, but I didn't think he felt strongly enough about it to take it to the head office."
"What was the problem, Con?"
Harvey rose out of his chair. "Andy, let me state—"
"Con?" said Bleeker quietly.
"I sort of blackmailed him, Andy. I pressured him into giving one of our secretaries a double raise, out of his budget. In return I got him a good trademark, made an infringement search on it, and got the trademark application on file in the Patent Office, all within four hours. He still has time to get his brochure proofs corrected and back to the printers tonight. But it isn't the Neol manual anymore. We changed the trademark to Shane."
"Shane?"
"Harvey picked it out, all by himself."
"You don't say," murmured Bleeker.
"The name is all right," grumbled Jayne. "It's the trademark application I'm protesting. It's a fraud, a phony. Andy, you perjured yourself when you made oath that the company had used the trademark in commerce. The mark didn't even exist until a few hours ago, and I know for a fact our shipping department hasn't mailed out anything labeled 'Shane' across a state line. It has to be interstate commerce, you know. But there hasn't been any shipment at all. Not one of the packages has left the Patent Department. I just checked."
Bleeker hunched his shoulders and began to swing his chair in slow oscillations. "Con?"
"He has the facts very nearly straight, Andy, but his inference is wrong. There was no fraud. When you signed the declaration, you did not commit perjury."
"But doesn't the form say that the goods have been shipped in Interstate commerce? Didn't I sign something to that effect?"
"The trademark application simply asks for the date of first use in commerce. The statute defines commerce as that commerce regulated by Congress. That's been settled for over a hundred and fifty years. Congress controls commerce between the states and territories, commerce between the United States and foreign countries, and commerce with the Indian tribes."
"But we didn't ship in interstate commerce," said Jayne.
"That's right," said Patrick.
"Nor in foreign commerce?" asked Bleeker.
"No, Andy."
"That leaves—"
"The Indians," said Patrick.
"Apaches," said Jayne acidly, "disguised as patent attorneys."
"Not exactly Apaches, Harvey," said Patrick. "But we do have a lawful representative of the Sioux tribe, duly accredited to the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington. Commerce is with the Sioux, through their representative. A sale to her is a sale to the tribe. If you checked on the packages, you probably noticed that one was on her desk."
"Her desk," rasped Jayne. "This . . . Indian . . . you mean—"
"Miss Green Willow, late of the Sioux reservation? Of course. Drives a hard bargain. We finally settled on fifteen cents for the gallon jug of terpineol. Her people back in Wyoming will make it into soap for the tourists."
Bleeker seemed suddenly to have problems with his face, and this was detectable largely by the efforts he was making to freeze his mouth in an expression of polite inquiry. Then his cheeks turned crimson, his stomach jumped, and he hastily swiveled his chair away from his visitors.
There was a long silence. Jayne looked from Bleeker's back to Patrick's earnest innocence. He was bewildered.
Finally Bleeker's chair swung around again. His eyes looked watery, but his voice was under control. "Harvey, can't we be satisfied to leave it this way?"
Jayne stood up. "Whatever you say, Andy." He refused to look at Patrick.
Bleeker smiled. "Well, gentlemen."
Jayne walked stiffly out the door. Patrick started to follow.
"Just a minute, Con," said Bleeker. He motioned Patrick back inside. "Close the door."
"Yes, Andy?"
Bleeker grinned. "One day, Con, they'll get you. They'll nail you to the wall. They'll hang you up by the thumbs. You have got to stop this. Is Willow really an Indian?"
"Certainly she is." Patrick was plaintive. "Doesn't anybody trust me? The arrangement is legal."
"Of course, of course," soothed Bleeker. "I was just thinking, how convenient to have your own Indian when you need a quick trademark registration. It's like having a notary public in your office."
"All our secretaries are notaries," said Patrick, puzzled.
Bleeker sighed. "Of course. They would be. I stepped into that one, didn't I?"
"What?"
"Never mind." Bleeker's chair began its slow rhythm again. "How's that chess player getting along? Alec Cord?"
"He made second place in the D.C. Annual."
"He's still not in your league, though, Con. Nobody, absolutely nobody, can equal your brand of chess."
Patrick squirmed. "I don't even know the moves, Andy."
"And your contract man, Sullivan? Can he write as good a contract as you?"
"Much better," said Patrick.
"Did he write the contract that bound you to the Hope Patent Department?"
"What do you mean, Andy?"
"Oh, never mind. I don't know what I mean. I don't think I'll ever understand you patent fellows. Take Paul. Chemists become lawyers; lawyers never become chemists. Paul can't—or won't—explain it. There's probably something profound in this, but I've never been able to unravel it. Does it mean chemists have the intellect and energy to rise to advocacy, but that lawyers could never rise further into the realm of science? Or does it mean that the law is the best of all professions, that once in the law, other disciplines are attainted?"
Bleeker's chair began to swivel slowly again. Patrick knew what was coming. He got everything under control.
"How is Paul the patent lawyer?" asked Bleeker.
"A competent ma
n," said Patrick carefully. "We're glad you sent him around to us."
Bleeker was almost defensive. "You know why I did it, Con. There's nobody else in the company I could trust to make him toe the mark. Really make him. You know what I mean."
"Sure, Andy, I know. He's a bright kid. I would have hired him anyway. Quit worrying about him. Just let him do a good job, day by day. Same as I did when I worked for you."
"I worked you hard, Con. Make Paul work hard."
"He works hard, Andy."
"And there's one more thing, Con. You switched trademarks. Neol to . . . Shane, you said?"
"That's right. Neol is a poor trademark. Shane is better."
"That's another thing Jayne is going to hold against you, Con. Switching marks on his cherished manual."
"It isn't really that bad, Andy." Patrick marveled at the older man's technique. At no time during the conversation had Bleeker asked Patrick whether the Patent Department was going to approve the terpineol plant, nor in fact had he asked him anything at all about the terpineol patent situation, even though they both knew this was vital to Bleeker's future in the company. And yet the questions and the pressure were there, all the same, and the questions were being asked by their very obvious omission. Patrick decided to meet the matter with directness. He said simply: "We haven't completely resolved the patent problem, Andy. But we certainly hope to have the answer for you well before the board meeting Monday morning. With luck, we may even have it tonight."
Bleeker murmured absently, "That's fine, Con."
Patrick started to get up, but Bleeker stopped him with a gesture.
"Shane," said Bleeker thoughtfully. "Very curious." His eyes became contemplative. "Perhaps you never realized it, Con, but we regarded your wife as an outstanding scientist. You were wise, however, to take up law in night school."
Patrick nodded, wondering.
"We got interested in her," continued Bleeker, "when she was just finishing up her master's degree at State. I think we still have her thesis around somewhere. Old Rohberg made a special trip to drive her up for her interview. She was so pretty, I made her an offer on the spot. My only error was in turning her over to you for the standard lab tour. You louse."
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