Don Wolfe touched the gadget again, and the desk settled gently to the floor. He put the haywire rigging on the desk between them. “I told you I heard Baird last night.”
He reached for a heavy glass paperweight and began methodically battering the contraption until the lights in the tiny tubes vanished amid an unrecognizable clutter of glass shards and twisted wire. He brushed the debris into the wastebasket.
“You don’t really need to apologize,” he said. “I just wanted to prove I’d done it, and tell you I’m with you.
“But it was close. If I hadn’t heard Baird last night, it would have been a different story. I didn’t savvy what you were up to until I heard his broadcast. I was too mad to recognize that you were obviously doing something besides exercising pure cussedness.
“I don’t think you’ve got a chance, you understand, but just the same I’m with you. I doubt there’s a development or research engineer in the country who wouldn’t like to personally deliver a knockout blow to the Patent Office. If there is, I don't know where he’s hiding.”
He shifted and arose from his seat. “I’m also going to be out of a job when my chief hears I’ve just smashed up this pretty little working model. I burned all notes. I don’t think the model shop people could reconstruct it from clues I might have left. So if you know of any lab that could use a good development man you might let me know.”
“I know of just a small job that needs doing — by a very good man. Sit down.”
Wolfe resumed his seat and Mart leaned forward. “You heard Baird,” said Mart. “So you know what kind he is. I want to use him, but I can’t do it directly. He’d balk at anything I even intimated.
“What I want is a congressional investigation — of me, and of the whole Patent System. I believe that Baird could bring it off. He’s just the kind to shake an old bone until everybody is so tired they will agree to anything he says. But he needs to be pushed into it. You’re the man to do the pushing.”
“What could I do?” said Wolfe.