Wallingford nodded comprehendingly.
"Of course," he agreed. "They have either fought out or bought out everybody who ever poked their nose into the business. They had to. I know all about them. If you have a clean invention you were foolish to go to them with it in the first place. They'd only offer you the cost of the first lawsuit they're bound to bring against you. That's no way to sell a patent. Inventors all die poor for that very reason. The thing for you to do is to start manufacturing, and make them come to you. Throw a scare into them."
Mr. Klug was frightened by the very suggestion.
"Jiminy, no!" he protested, shaking his head vigorously. "I got no big money like that. I'd lose every cent and all my little property."
"It don't take so much money, if you use it right," insisted Wallingford. "Use as little capital as you can for manufacturing, and save the most of it for litigation. I'll bet I could sell your patent for you." He pondered a while with slowly kindling eyes, and smiled out of the window at the rushing landscape. "I tell you what you do. Get up a company and I'll buy some stock in it myself."
"Humbug with that stock business!" Mr. Klug exclaimed with explosive violence, his mustache bristling now until it stuck straight out. "I would not get up any such a business with stock in it. I had all the stock I want, and I never buy nor sell any any more. I got some I'll give away."
Wallingford smiled introspectively.
"Oh, well, form a partnership, then. You have four or five friends who could put up five thousand apiece, haven't you?"
Mr. Klug was quite certain of that.
"I am president of the Germania Building Loan Association," he announced with pardonable pride.