"I have good advice. Hanchett, Goodloe and Tryson, Richmond Building, are my attorneys. They will put you in the way of finding out anything you'd like to know."
There was a pause while the New Yorker was making a memorandum of the address. Then he went straight to the point.
"As I have said, I'm here to do business. We don't need the plant. Will you sell us your patents?"
"Yes; on one condition."
"And that is—?"
"That you first put us out of business. You'll have to smash Chiawassee Limited painstakingly and permanently before you can buy my holdings."
The shrewd-eyed gentleman who had unified practically all of the pipe foundries in the United States smiled a gentle negative.
"That would be rather out of our line. If Mr Farley owned the patents, and was disposed to fight us—as, indeed, he is not—we might try to convince him. But we are not out for vengeance—another man's vengeance, at that."
"Very well, then; you won't get what you've come after. The patents go with the plant. You can't have one without the other," said Tom, eyeing his opponent through half-closed lids.
"But we can buy the plant to-morrow, at a very reasonable figure. Farley is anxious enough to come in out of the wet."