"You ought to know I don't mean it that way," said Tom, frowning a little. "But here is the way it sizes up. There is money in this pipe-making; some money now, and big money later on. Farley has refused to go into it unless you make it a company proposition; as president and a controlling stock-holder you can't very well go into it now without making it in some sort a company proposition. But you can transfer the patents to me, and I can contract with Chiawassee Consolidated to make pipe for me."
Caleb Gordon's frown matched that of his son.
"That would certainly be givin' Colonel Duxbury a dose of his own medicine; but I don't like it, Tom. It looks as if we were taking advantage of him."
"No. I'd make the proposition to him, personally, if he were here, and the boss; and he'd be a fool if he didn't jump at it," said Tom earnestly. "But there is more to it than that. If we make a go of this, and don't protect ourselves, the two Farleys will come back and put the whole thing in their pockets. I won't go into it on any such terms. When they do come back, I'm going to have money to fight them with, and this is our one little ghost of a chance. Ring up Judge Bates and get him to come over here and make a legal transfer of these patents to me."
The thing was done, though not without some misgivings on Caleb's part. Honesty and fair dealing, even with a known enemy, had been the rule of his life; and while he could not put his finger on the equivocal thing in Tom's plan, he was vaguely troubled. Analyzed after the fact, the trouble was vicarious, and for Tom. It defined itself more clearly when they went together to South Tredegar to have an attorney draw up the agreement under which Tom's pipe venture was to be conducted. Tom, as the owner of the patents, was fair with the Chiawassee Consolidated, but he was not liberal; indeed, he would have been quite illiberal if the attorney had not warned him that an agreement, to be defensible, must be equitable as well as legal.
At this stage in the journey Tom could not have accounted for himself in the ethical field. Something, a thing intangible, had gone out of him. He could not tell what it was; but he missed it. The kindly Gordon nature was intact, or he hoped it was, but the neighbor-love, which was his father's rule of life, seemed not to have come down to him in its largeness. Ruth for the Farleys was not to be expected of him, he argued; but behind this was a vaster ruthlessness, arming him to win the industrial battle, making him a hard man as he had suddenly become a strong one.
And the experiences of the summer were all hardening. He plunged headlong into the world of business, into a panic-time competition which was in grim reality a fight for life, and there seemed to be little to choose between trampling or being trampled. By early autumn the iron industries of the country were gasping, and the stacks of pig in the Chiawassee yards, kept down a little during the summer by a few meager orders, grew and spread until they covered acres. As long as money could be had, the iron was bonded as fast as it was made, and the proceeds were turned into wages to make more. But when money was no longer obtainable from this source, the pipe venture was the only hope.
With the entire foundry force at the Chiawassee making pipe, Tom had gone early into the market with his low-priced product. But the commercial side of the struggle was fire-new to him, and he found himself matched against men who knew buying and selling as he knew smelting and casting. They routed him, easily at first, with increasing difficulty as he learned the new trade, but always with certainty. It was Norman, the correspondence man, transformed now into a sales agent, who gave him his first hint of the inwardnesses.
"We're too straight, Mr. Gordon; that's at the bottom of it," he said to Tom, over a grill-room luncheon at the Marlboro one day. "It takes money to make money."
Tom's eyebrows went up and his ears were open. The battle had grown desperate.